#the other thing i drew were. story boards i guess

[polarisbear]

oh yeah they weren’t kidding those ugly drawings can cathartic

#they look like ass if you’re wondering. once again if you make an ali draw a face you will get garbage but if you #make an ali draw a body you’ll get something okay #the other thing i drew were. story boards i guess #scribbles. delicious #no one can read my notes but you’ll Understand soon enough

[astro-b-o-y-d]

Triangulum - Chapter 1- Return to the Falls

— — — — — — —

“Tree. Tree. Billboard. Gas station. Telephone pole. Tree. Billboar—hey, that one’s got a whale on it!”

The clink of metal to glass echoed through the nearly-empty bus as Mabel pressed her cellphone against the window. “I wonder why they always use whales as mascots for things like car washes?” she inquired. “It’s not like they can actually drive cars or anything! They’re too big to fit through the doors!”

Such a question drew an amused chuckle from the person on the other end of the phone. “I think the thought process there is, like…you use water to clean cars?” they guessed. “And whales live in the water? And then they figure everyone can make the rest of the connection from there.”

From the seat besides Mabel, Dipper looked up from his journal. “Whales are also filter-feeders,” he pointed out. “They filter their food through something called baleen plates, which kinda look like the flappy, hangy-down brushes and sponges in a car wash? Maybe that’s one reason.”

He pointed the tip of his pencil at Mabel. “Also, you know Dev can’t actually see the billboard over the phone, right? …Adding onto that, how are you getting a signal this far out in the woods?”

Mabel moved the phone from the window and pressed it tightly against her chest. “Through the power of love!”

“Yeah, well, I’m almost positive that the ‘power of love’ isn’t gonna make your phone magically grow a video screen and a high-quality internet connection.”

With a scowl, Mabel placed her hands on her hips. “Almost positive isn’t completely positive, Mr. Negative!”

She punctuated her remark with a raspberry, before turning her attention back to her phone. “Sorry, Dev, you know how Dipper is,” she said fondly. “The big dorkus always has to apply logic to everything.”

“He raises a good point, though,” Dev replied. “I wouldn’t’ve made the connection between baleen plates and car wash sponges on my own, so I’m glad he had all that off the top of his head.”

A laugh, before their tone grew more accusatory. “Almost as if someone’s in the middle of researching whales for a certain reason.”

Dipper shifted in his seat, his gaze suddenly and intently focused on a stain of unknown origin on the back of the seat in front of them. “I-I have no idea what you’re talking about.”

“...Diiiiip, you promised we’d look into that story about those sky whales off the coast together!” Dev whined playfully. “We were gonna make a whole night of it once you guys got back, with a red yarn board and everything!”

“I swear I was going to wait!” Dipper insisted. “But, like, listen…we’re gonna be spending all summer with our great-uncles. And they’ve spent the last few months sailing around the world, hunting a bunch of cool, paranormal beings out there on the open seas.”

He pressed a hand to the back of his head. “And I thought…you know—”

“—you thought sky whales might be one of the things your uncles saw out on the ocean, and you wanted to learn as much as you could to look all cool and smart in front of them,” Dev finished for him. “Especially in front of the totally awesome, Multiverse-jumping—studier of all things weird and strange—Stanford Pines?”

A beat. “…The one you promised me you’d get an autograph from and I’m totally not using this as an excuse to remind you about that?”

This earned a laugh out of Dipper. “Subtly noted, but it’s just…they’re gonna have so many stories about the places they’ve been over the past nine months,” he elaborated. “The most exciting story I have is that Phoenix incident, and it wasn’t even a real Phoenix!”

Dev let out a groan. “Ugh, don’t remind me! Whose bright idea was it again to smuggle a chicken into Science class?”

“I guess that’s one mystery we’ll never solve,” Dipper added with a look of disgust. “But what we did learn is that burnt feathers smell like someone lighting their hair on fire in a barn.”

“No kidding, I’ll never get the smell of stale hay and dirt outta my nose.”

“This is why pigs are the superior livestock,” Mabel said, punctuating her point with an indignant harrumph. “No stinky feathers!”

Dipper nudged her with his elbow before he set his journal and pencil down on his lap. “Weren’t you complaining a month ago about how Waddles is too big to smuggle into school anymore?”

“That’s not his fault! It’s the fault of society and their inability to stop body shaming everything!” She pressed her hands, phone and all, against her cheeks. ”Especially the most adorable wittle piggy in the entire world and his fat wittle piggy tummy~!”

This earned a laugh from Dev. “They’re just jealous they can’t be him, I bet,” he agreed. “Either way, Dip, it’s no worries about the sky whales thing. Just means I’ve gotta start stocking up on new research material for when you guys get home.”

There was a light tapping sound from the other side of the phone, as if Dev were tapping the speaker with their finger. “And it means that you owe me one!” they insisted. “Which you can easily pay off by spilling all the deets about what went down up there last August!”

The twins exchanged a mirrored look. “Dev—”

“Come on, Dipping Dots, you can’t leave me hanging forever,” Dev begged. “I know it was more than just some weird weather patterns! Just…just give me a hint at least! Was it ghosts? Aliens? …Alien ghosts?”

Dipper shot his sister a look, one that she returned with an understanding nod. “Dipper, stop trying to steal my boyfriend’s attention with your nerdy-nerd talk!” she said, loud enough for Dev to hear. “I wanna get as much talking time as I can with him before we get to town!”

With a smirk, he gave her ribs another nudge with his elbow. “Hey, Dev was a part of the Paranormal/Supernatural Club before you two started going out!” he pointed out. “So technically—aha, stop!”

His words dissolved into laughter as Mabel retaliated by putting as much of her weight on him as she could. “Technically, schmechnically, you can’t do nerdy-nerd stuff with Dev if you’re flat as a pancake!” she said, her body vibrating with giggles as she smushed against him.

“Dev, help, I’m being smothered!” Dipper called to the phone, between bouts of his own laughter. “Tell Mabel she’s cute or something!”

This earned another laugh from Dev in response, one warm and full of affection. “Mabel Syrup, could you please stop trying to kill my best friend and Paranormal/Supernatural Club co-president?”

Smiling wider, Mabel straightened herself upright in the seat and held the phone in her ear. “We~ell, since you’re using that nickname, I guess I can be merciful today!”

With a dramatic gag, Dipper pointed a finger at his throat in disgust. “Ugh, I said call her cute, not break out the pet names.”

“It’s not my fault she’s as sweet as her namesake.”

“It’s not her namesake!”

“Boys, boys,” Mabel interrupted with a giggle. “As fun as it is to both flirt with my boyfriend and annoy my brother at the same time, I do think we should circle back to the point Dip made earlier about my cell reception.” 

She held the phone back up to her ear. “Since we’re almost at the Falls anyway, you wanna go ahead and hang up before the majestic oaks of Oregon do it for us?”

Dipper raised a finger. “Technically the trees around here are mostly firs and birch trees.”

“Oaks, Oregon…I wanted the words to sound all samey-samey,” Mabel pointed out. “And firs doesn’t start with an O.”

“...Neither does majestic?”

“Yeah, we can hang up for now,” Dev said. “I’m sure you guys probably wanna spend the rest of the day settling in, but if you don’t mind talking later tonight—”

“Uh, of course we can talk tonight~!” Mabel interrupted excitedly. “Not only that, I can introduce you to my Grunkles if they’re finished settling in by that point, too! And I’m sure Soos and Melody will want to say hi—ooh, and of course you can meet Candy and Grenda when we have our inevitable ‘Back In Gravity Falls’ sleepover—”

“Okay, maybe we slowly ease Dev into the weirdness that is Gravity Falls and everyone in it?” Dipper suggested. “Besides, I’d like some time to talk to them over the summer, too!”

“Hey, I take offense to that,” Dev said. “The first thing, not the second. Are you forgetting who sought you out to join your club in the first place? And brought his own research material to the very first meeting?”

Dipper gently pulled the phone towards him. “Are you forgetting who’s actually been to Gravity Falls in the first place?”

“No, but I’m also not forgetting who’s keeping all the juicy details about what happened last summer to themselves,” Dev pointed out in return.

“Okay, okay,” Mabel said, pulling the phone back. “No more nerd talk about nerd things, you’re wasting all my minutes! Use your own minutes for that!”

She returned it to her ear with a wide grin. “But we can figure out a proper talking schedule later,” she said sweetly, then paused. “...After tonight though, because you already said we could talk and no take backs!”

“I wouldn’t dream of it,” Dev assured her. “Love you.”

“And I looooove—” Mabel wiggled her finger with a mischievous look before booping it against the screen of her phone. “—you~!”

“...Did you boop the phone?”

“Yeah-huh~!”

“Bye, Dev!” Dipper called as well. “...I know you two are having a moment, but I wanted to say bye, too!”

“Bye to both of you!” Dev replied. “Talk to you tonight!”

There was a click as the call ended and Mabel pressed the phone against her chest. “Ehehe, I love them!”

“So I’ve gathered,” Dipper said with a smile. “What’re you guys at now, seven months?”

“Seven months, and seventeen days~!” Mabel clarified, with a closing slap of her flip phone and a delighted kick of her feet. “Can you believe it? Last year I would’ve gone through at least seventy guys in that amount of time! Now look at me! Miss Lady-In-A-Serious-Relationship-With-One-Of-The-Best-Guys-In-The-World over here~!”

“You know that number’s a wild exaggeration, right?”

“You’re a wild exaggeration,” Mabel retorted, with a nudge to his shoulder. “And I like how you couldn’t even argue the ‘one of the best guys in the world’ thing, because you know it’s true! Well, he’s the best guy whenever he’s actually in guy mode, of course. Otherwise he’s just the best significant other! But right now, he’s the best guy in the world! 

With a wide grin, she snaked an arm around Dipper’s shoulder before once again smushing most of her weight against him. “Except for thiiiiis best guy in the world, of course~!” she said, words slightly muffled from how her cheek was squished against his arm. “Who knows he absolutely doesn’t count when it comes to me talking about the best guys in the world, because it already goes without saying that he’s the best guy in the world!”

She gave him a squished little smile. “He knows that, right?”

With a warm smile of his own, Dipper gently pushed her back to her side of the bus seat. “He knows that. Although ‘best guy in the world’ is starting to sound like a fake sentence.”

“Haha, yeah,” Mabel agreed with a giggle. “I used it a lot, huh?”

An oink beneath their legs turned their attention to the underside of the seat in front of them, where a fat, pink hog peered up at them with a lazy tilt of his head.

With a squeal of utter delight, Mabel reached down and scooped him up in her arms. “Aww, we can’t forget about the other best guy in the world~!” she cooed, cradling him like a baby. “Are you having fun crawling around and eating all the abandoned wrappers and gum stuck to the underside of the seats?”

Waddles let out another oink and contently buried his snout in the bend of her arm, as if he considered himself nothing more than a simple lap dog. Despite his own amusement at the sight, Dipper raised an eyebrow at his sister. “Seriously, you should probably stop letting him do that before the driver gets fed up and makes us walk the rest of the way.”

“He wouldn’t dare,” Mabel insisted. “This bus is probably the cleanest its ever been! If anything, the driver should be thanking Waddles for helping him out!”

After giving Waddles’ body a shake for additional emphasis, she pressed a kiss to the top of his head. “Isn’t that right, you big, pink angel? You even missed your chance to say hi to Dev because you were too busy being the most helpful piggy around!”

“Too bad we couldn’t use him as a distraction,” Dipper said, and reached for his journal again. “You know Dev’s as crazy about him as you are.”

Mabel’s smile fell, and she tightened her embrace around Waddles’ body. “Right…”

Dipper’s hand froze less than an inch from the journal, and he gave her a sympathetic look. “The squishing me was a nice touch,” he said with a halfhearted smile of his own. “Really took his mind off the Weirdmageddon topic…”

With a sigh, he flipped it open to the page he’d been writing on and picked up his pencil. “You know, we could just ask Mayor Tyler if we can bend the rules a little bit and we can tell our buddy back home about what happened last summer.”

Mabel leaned her body back towards the window, her head hitting the glass with a light thump. “What if he doesn’t believe us?”

“Who, Mayor Tyler? I mean, if we promised that Dev wouldn’t go blabbing it to other people and told him about how obsessed he is with the town, he’d probably understand—”

“Dev, Dipper,” Mabel clarified. “What if Dev doesn’t believe us?”

“Have you met the guy?” Dipper asked. “Out of anyone back home, I feel like he’d be the first one to believe us. I mean, are we forgetting that this is the same person who swears up and down that they've kissed an alien before?"

A pause. "Before following that claim up with ‘but I’d rather kiss Mabel before kissing a thousand aliens’ like the hopeless romantic he is?”

A small smile tugged at the corners of Mabel’s mouth, but disappeared just as quickly as it threatened to appear. “I mean, he does say that all the time. But…”

“But?”

Mabel let out an uncertain hum, but any further response was cut off by the sound of faint crackling from the bus’s loudspeaker. “Attention, passengers, we are approaching the city limits of Gravity Falls, and will be arriving within the town itself in a matter of minutes,” the driver’s voice rang out cheerfully. “Just in case anyone was interested in peering out their window as we passed by the welcome sign, for sentimental reasons.”

The twins shared a mirrored look before quickly scooting over to the window, just in time to see the familiar sign that marked the town’s border whiz past the bus.

It was a fleeting sight; one that came and went within seconds. But their silence continued for a just a bit longer after it passed, even as the endless line of trees finally began to melt into familiar homes and buildings.

Still keeping her attention fixed on the view outside, Mabel’s hand instinctively found her brother’s and gave it a light squeeze. “We’re back…”

Dipper nodded, squeezing her hand in return. “We’re back.”

They remained still, letting themselves be lost in the thrill of finally being back in that old, familiar town for just a few minutes longer, before the realization that they needed to be ready to exit the bus motivated them to finally move and start gathering up their belongings.

“Okay, since we’re now officially back in town,” Mabel began, setting Waddles aside so she could pull her bag to her lap. “What’re you looking forward to the most this summer?”

“Hmm, hard to say,” Dipper said, reaching for his own. “I mean, last year I spent most of the summer trying to uncover the mysteries behind the journal’s author, then spent the remaining time after that with the author himself!”

He unzipped the front and stuffed his journal inside. “Guess I’m just looking forward to spending more time with Grunkle Ford again, now that he doesn’t have to stay down in the basement and deal with all that Bill stuff,” he said. “I know I wanna tell him all about the stuff me and Dev have studied together, and—ooh, I really wanna introduce him to that DDnmD podcast we started listening to recently—”

“Hey, that was what I was looking forward to, too!” Mabel said delightedly. “Well, not the nerd stuff but the ‘spending time with Grunkle Ford’ stuff! You got to spend so much time with him last year, and I barely got to see him at all!”

She placed her hands on her hips. “Well, this year I’m determined to spend as much time with him as I possibly can! You know a guy who puts that much effort into his journals has to be a pro at scrapbooking!”

She reached into her bag and pulled something out with a wide grin, before holding it up for Dipper to see. “I even made him a personalized sweater, so he has another one to wear besides his red one!” she explained, pointing to a smiling picture of Ford on the front. “See? I knitted a happy little picture of him—” She moved her finger to the next one. “—and this one’s of the six-fingered hand that was on his journals—”

And finally her finger landed on the stitched writing at the bottom. “—and this part says ‘A-FORD-able! Not like ‘affordable’, but like ‘adorable with Ford!’’ …I was already halfway done when I remembered ‘affordable’ was already a word, so I just added that last part instead of undoing everything.”

While she stuffed the sweater back into her bag, Dipper added: “I think I’m also looking forward to just spending time with Grunkle Stan in general, too. I mean, sure, we got to spend a lot of time with him last year.”

He waved his hands. “But he was hiding such a big secret, one he had to deal with by himself. This year, he’s got nothing to hide!”

Mabel held up both pointer fingers. “Right! Because the something he had to hide is gonna be right there next to him! And the thing that was hiding no longer has to hide in any way!”

She smushed them together with silly little noises for emphasis. “And since Grunkle Stan and Grunkle Ford are getting along now, it means we can all spend time together like one big happy family!” 

Satisfied with her own amateur pantomime, she dropped her hands and returned to her belongings. “Speaking of which, who did Grunkle Stan say was going to be greeting us at the bus stop?” she asked. “I know Soos and Grunkle Ford will be there, but I really hope Candy and Grenda can make it!”

She beamed widely. “Grenda said in her last letter that she’s been taking up wrestling, and that she learned a move that could possibly snap me in half! Although Candy discredited this claim with the fact that she only got a fractured disc when Grenda tried it on her, but you know what they say: practice makes perfect!”

Dipper raised an eyebrow. “You guys can’t just hug each other?”

“We can hug as she’s breaking my spine in two!”

With a shrug, Dipper slung his bag over his shoulder. “Well, to answer your original question; yeah, Ford and Soos are gonna be there. Other than that, I’m not sure. Your friends being there is something you’d know more than I would, and I can’t think of anyone else who would come.”

He tapped a hand to his chin as he thought hard for a moment. “I know Soos and Melody wanted to throw that welcome-back party for us tomorrow, though. So maybe they’ll only have a small group of people at the bus stop today. You know, to give us time to get settled in without being bombarded by a billion people?”

Mabel stuck out her lip and gave the seat in front of them a defiant slam with her fists. “Boooooo, I want to be bombarded by people! I wanna be able to give out at least three-dozen hugs before Grenda snaps me in half like a twig!”

“I once again ask why you guys can’t just hug each each other.”

“Bombardment!” Mabel chanted, slamming her fist in rhythm. “Bombardment!”

There was another crackle of the loudspeakers over their heads as the driver spoke again: “Attention, passengers; this is a follow-up to the previous announcement, but there might be a bit of a delay in getting you to the next stop.”

Dipper and Mabel exchanged a curious look, before Dipper cupped his hands around his mouth. “Why?” he called towards the front of the bus.

“Has the traffic here gotten that bad in nine months?” Mabel added.

Another crackle from the intercom. “See for yourselves, kids.”

At the driver’s suggestion, the twins scooted out of their seats and into the aisleway, remaining bags in hand and Waddles at their heels as they made their way to the front of the bus. As they came to a stop near the bus driver’s seat, their eyes grew wide at the sight that awaited them in the street below.

To the eyes of an unknown tourist, it would look like nothing more than a dozen garden gnomes stacked atop each other before a collection of golf balls spilled all over the road. 

To anyone who’d spent enough time in Gravity Falls, however—

“For the last time, Franz; either you cross the street quickly or we’re letting a car run you over.”

At the front of the collection of golfballs—or more accurately, small persons by the name of Lilliputtians who happened to strongly resemble golfballs—a blue ball crossed their arms with a sour look towards the gnome at the top of the pile. “And we’re telling you for the last time, Jeff, we’re going as fast as we can!” he argued in return. “It’s not like we can just stack ourselves on top of each other like you gnomes can!”

“You’re golf balls!” The gnome, Jeff, pointed out irritably. “You can roll!”

Franz scoffed and placed his hands on his hips. “Oh, so just because we happen to look like golf balls, you think we can roll everywhere?” he asked. “What about you gnomes, huh? Without linking up to each other, I’ll bet you couldn’t go more than a few feet without getting winded!”

Jeff crossed his own arms with a roll of his eyes. “Yeah, well, you’ve never seen Shmebulock run after six nosefuls of mushroom spores.”

His point was emphasized by an enthusiastic “Shmebulock!” from one of the gnomes at the bottom of the snack.

From the bus, the twins shared a knowing look before Mabel turned to the bus driver. “You know what? You can just let us off here, we can walk the rest of the way.”

“And we’ll see what we can do about clearing the road for you,” Dipper added.

With a shrug, the driver opened the doors to the bus and the two headed down the stairs; Mabel bounded out the door and onto the sidewalk with a delighted laugh while Dipper followed behind with more reserved steps. 

Despite their different methods of stair descension, their smiles were equally bright as they looked to the smaller beings still crowded in the middle of the road. “So, what do you think’s going on?” Dipper asked.

Mabel turned back to the bus steps and reached out to grab Waddles, who had slowly and piggishly ambled down the steps after them. “Not sure, but isn’t it wild to see both groups just…out in the middle of the street like this?”

“Right?!” Dipper said with enthusiastic agreement. “It’s like—not even five minutes back in town and we’re already getting a taste of peak Gravity Falls weirdness!”

After setting Waddles down to the sidewalk, Mabel clapped her hands together with just as much gusto. “I know, isn’t it great?”

“I’m warning you for the last time, Jeff: get out of our way before we knock your bearded butts down like rolling pins!” Franz insisted firmly. “You wanna see how fast we can actually roll? Keep pushing my buttons and you’ll find out!”

The twins exchanged a look. “Right, we should probably do the thing we got off the bus early to do,” Dipper said. “Otherwise we just made getting to the shack harder for ourselves for no reason.”

“Well, at the very least you can add ‘breaking up a fight between golf ball people and gnomes’ to the list of cool stories to tell Grunkle Stan and Grunkle Ford,” Mabel pointed out. “I’m almost positive they haven’t had a chance to do that yet!”

Dipper let out a laugh. “Weren’t you just saying a little bit ago that almost positive isn’t completely positive?”

With a laugh of her own, Mabel pushed a lighthearted fist to his arm before turning her gaze to the groups bickering in the road. “So how are we doing this?”

A shrug. “I mean, smartest method would just be to ask them why they’re fighting.”

“Very true!” Mabel said. “And who knows? Maybe if we know why they’re fighting, we can help them work it out peacefully.”

“Or we can at least distract them long enough to get them outta the road,” Dipper pointed out. “Then if they wanna continue the fight on the sidewalk, we just start heading for the shack.”

“That is also something we can do~!” 

She cupped her hands around her mouth and called loudly: “Hey, boys! What’s with all the commotion and bus blocking?”

“Yeah, none of you are more than two feet tall, and you should probably get out of the road before cars realize they can just run over you,” Dipper added helpfully.

From his spot in the road, Jeff let out a scoff. “Maybe on our own, but we gnomes could always just—”

He fell silent, the delayed realization of whom he was speaking to finally settling in as he looked to Dipper and Mabel with wide eyes. And he was not the only one; the attention of both gnomes and Lilliputtians alike were now focused solely on Dipper and Mabel.

“Well, shiver me timbers, amongst other pirate-y exclamations of surprise!” One of the pirates piped up. “The Saviors of the Falls be returned to us at last!”

“The Hugelings are back!” A knight Lilliputtian added excitedly.

The rest of the group (both gnome and golfball alike) let out similar exclamations of delight, their crosswalk argument momentarily forgotten as they all hurried to the sidewalk to greet the twins. 

And once the bus driver took advantage of the cleared road to continue onwards, the commotion was enough to also draw the attention of other nearby townsfolk. Townsfolk who—Dipper and Mabel observed as they got a good look around—were not quite as human as they had been the year prior.

A fair number of them were still clearly human; Tad Strange could be seen purchasing a loaf of bread through the window of a nearby store, while the man known as the ‘Free Pizza’ guy was taking a leisurely stroll just a short distance up the road.

But there was also no mistaking the mermaid in a small, mobile tank at an outside table for the nearby bistro, pulling her attention from her waterproof phone long enough to look their way.  

Or the Abominable Bro-man stepping out of a nearby Jeep, the remaining three Bro-men still seated in the vehicle and pumping their fists in the air as they chanted his name with fraternal unity. A chant that quickly melted into the twins' names when the original Bro-man pointed them out with a look of pure, righteous elation.

And there was certainly no missing the flock of Eye-Bats resting comfortably on the nearby powerlines alongside a group of ordinary woodpeckers, or the Woodpecker-peckers that had taken up residence upon the original birds’ backs. 

While the peckers and pecker-peckers showed little interest in the kids, one Eye-Bat shifted its attention down towards them with mild curiosity, before turning to the nearest Woodpecker-pecker and shooting a burst of energy from its cornea. In a flash, the miniature bird had been transformed into solid stone, the extra weight causing the powerline to sag beneath the original—but otherwise unbothered—Woodpecker.

As more townsfolk—human and supernatural alike—also turned their attention towards the kids, Dipper cast an amused look to his sister. “You still in the mood to get bombarded by a bunch of people?”

Mabel giggled in response, and carefully picked up one of the Lilliputtians for a hug. “I don’t know what point you’re trying to prove, this is awesome! It’s like our own little welcome parade!”

“Well, if this isn’t a delightful delight of a sight~!”

At the sound of another voice, both turned their attention towards a thin man approaching them from further down the sidewalk. His overall demeanor was riddled with giddiness and a cartoonish banner that read ‘Mayor’ was displayed prominently across his chest. “Dipper and Mabel Pines! I was wondering when you two would finally get back to town!”

He waggled a finger at them. “And here I thought I’d have to wait until tomorrow night to say hello to you kids again!”

“Hi, Mayor Tyler,” Mabel said, giving him a wave with the arm that wasn't wrapped around the Lilliputtian, before using it to gesture to the rest of them. “I see someone’s been having a busy nine months~!”

Dipper nodded in agreement. “Yeah, it’s so cool to see the gnomes and everyone else just…wandering around the town like this!”

From where the gnomes were gathered, Jeff let out a smug little chuckle. “Hear that, Franz? We got a personal shoutout and everything.”

Franz turned to glare at him. “You know he was only using you pointy-hatted jerks as an example!”

“I’ll make an example outta you, you round son of a—”

Their heated exchange from before returned in full swing as the two groups began to argue again, the Lilliputtian in Mabel’s arms leaping back down to join the fight with balled fists and a collection of gnome-targeted obscenities.

In response, Mabel’s gestured arm shifted to a pointing finger. “Oh, right, they were fighting in the middle of the street and blocked our bus.”

With a sigh, Tyler pressed a hand to his forehead. "Again?"

Near his foot, a French Lilliputtian piped up with a mighty: "Sacré bleu!"— one that likely translated out to "Again!"—before he hurled his body at the nearest gnome.

While they watched this unfold, Dipper looked back to Tyler. “So is this, like…normal for them?”

“I’m afraid so,” Tyler replied wearily. "They simply cannot stop butting heads no matter how I try to clear the air—oh, hold on, I worry they might start biting if I don’t do something—”

He moved towards the center of the combined groups, carefully tiptoeing between the small golf balls with an ease that implied he had done this countless times before, and came to a stop near both Franz and Jeff. “Now, boys, you know we’ve talked about this no less than a week ago!”

Franz pointed a finger at Jeff, eyebrows furrowed. “He was trying to rush us again—”

“—and I was pointing out how, again, they can just roll across the crosswalk!” Jeff argued in retaliation. “I just don’t understand how they’ve got the ability to move that fast, but then get mad at people for pointing out they have it!”

Franz shook a fist at him. “Oh, I’ll show you fast, with how fast I can ram my hand up your—”

“Okay, gentleman,” Tyler interrupted quickly, and took a knee so he could be closer to them. “Jeff, you know what I’ve said about antagonizing the Lilliputtians. If you and your boys can’t play nice, I might have to resort to—well, looking elsewhere for a crossing guard!”

“Wh—aw, come on!” Jeff protested. “That’ll be the fifth job we’ve lost in a month! Do you know how hard it is to nab the attention of a potential queen if we go back to being a bunch of unemployed chumps?”

Franz rolled his eyes. “Yeah, pretty sure it’s not the lack of a job they hate about you.”

“Why, you little—”

Jeff launched his entire body at Franz as the two of them began to squabble again, and Tyler reached out to grab them both by the back of their shirts. “Hey, come on now! I’m a fan of a good fight as much as the next guy, but you’re setting a bad example in front of our special guests—”

This earned a shrug from the twins. “I mean, we really don’t care,” Dipper said.

“One of them tried to kill us, the other tried to marry me,” Mabel added. “We’ve kinda already seen both of them at their worst already.”

“Need some help?”

A familiar voice from behind—followed by a massive shadow enveloping both of them in shade—turned both twins around, only for them to be greeted by the sight of a tall Manotaur towering high above them. But what really grabbed their attention was the teenager seated on his left shoulder, smile wide as she hopped down to the sidewalk in front of them. 

Her hair was much shorter than the last time they had seen her, just barely peeking out from beneath the faded hat that she had swapped with Dipper for her own. And her original green flannel shirt had been exchanged for an unbuttoned red one over a white tank top. 

Despite the differences in her appearance, however, there was no mistaking who she was—and her old hiking boots had barely touched the pavement before the twins rushed to embrace her in a joint hug. “Wendy!”

With a laugh, Wendy slunk an arm around each of their shoulders to hug them in return. “And here I thought you squirts would beat me up to the Shack,” she said, moving her hands to playfully noogie the tops of their heads. “What’re you doing all the way down here?”

Mabel gestured to the small crowd before them. “Well, our bus had to stop because—”

“Oh, for the love of—” Wendy interrupted with a sigh, before looking over to Tyler. “Are they fighting again?”

From where he stood—desperately holding the two leaders at arm’s length to prevent more blood from being drawn—Tyler’s expression melted into a look of relief. “Wendy! Thank goodness you’re here!” he said. “Uh, would you and Chutzpar mind—”

She crossed her arms with a miffed look. “You know, people are going to think it’s unprofessional that the mayor has to keep getting help from outside sources to solve the town’s issues—”

“Wendy, please?”

Wendy rolled her eyes, and looked up towards the Manotaur beside her. “Whaddaya think, Big Guy?”

“Many months ago, I would’ve encouraged the idea of using violence to solve one’s problems,” Chutzpar said stoically. “And I still would, were it not an inconvenience to Mayor Tyler.”

He held up a finger. “Punching out your feelings is not inherently a bad way to solve some issues, but there is a time and place for it,” he continued. “And right in the middle of town where people are looking to enjoy their day isn’t the right time nor the right place! So KNOCK IT OFF or I’ll knock YOU OFF!”

He punctuated the last sentence with a warning stomp of his left hoof, one strong enough to rumble the sidewalk beneath everyone’s feet. And once he was finished, he looked to Wendy hopefully—as if he were expecting her to praise him for his answer—and she gave an approving nod before looking to the crowd: “You guys chill now, or does he need to do that again?”

Thankfully the fighting had immediately ceased at Chutzpar’s warning stomp, both gnome and Lilliputtians alike trembling in shock. “H-hey, that’s a really rude way to get someone to stop doing something, you know!” Franz said irritably.

“Yeah,” Jeff piped up in agreement. “You can’t just use your Manotaur buddy to push us around like that!”

“Yeah, well, maybe next time you’ll stop fighting when Tyler asks you to stop first,” Wendy said. “Besides, it worked, didn’t it? You guys are actually agreeing on something and have chilled out a little bit, right?”

Franz and Jeff exchanged a skeptical look, before they both turned away in disgust with halfhearted mutters of “I guess so.” and “Whatever.” in unison.

“Guys...”

Jeff crossed his arms. “Fine, I guess it doesn’t really matter how long they take to get across the street," he said defeatedly. "Besides, the longer we man the cross work, the more chances we get to snag attention from potential queen candidates."

“And I guess we could speed up a bit when we walk,” Franz added. “We’ll probably have to now, if we wanna make it to the sticker store and back to the golf course before our lunch break is over.”

Tyler clasped his hands together. “There, you see? Problem-solving!” he said delightedly. “Now, let’s clear off the sidewalk and give Dipper and Mabel some breathing room, okay?”

With only a small handful of grumbling, the gnomes and Lilliputtians shuffled back towards the crosswalk. Once they had properly dispersed, Tyler stood up to full height again and clasped his hands together. “Thank you so much, Wendy, you are an angel in lumberjack’s clothing~!”

Wendy crossed her arms again, expression souring at his compliment. “I meant what I said; you’ve really gotta get a handle on doing stuff like this by yourself,” he said. “The town’s not gonna take a guy who can’t even break up a fight between some gnomes and sentient golf balls seriously.”

Tyler chuckled nervously and once again pressed a hand to his forehead. “Well, regardless, your help is always appreciated!” he said, with a look to Chutzpar. “And thank you once again for all your help, big fella. I’m actually glad I caught you, I was actually on my way over to the lumbermill to discuss Thursday’s plans with Dan—”

This earned him an annoyed scoff from Wendy, while Chutzpar simply nodded. “Yes, that is the reason we were on our way to see you—”

“I was on my way to the Mystery Shack.”

“—why we were on our way to see you, before we made our way to the Mystery Shack,” Chutzpar continued, paying no mind to Wendy’s interruption. “I come with a message from him. And a gift.”

He looked to Wendy, who gave him a nod far more halfhearted than his own, before he held out the small object he had been carrying in one of his mighty fists. 

It was a small, wood-carved animal (a bear to be specific), and it was clear that every notch in the wood had been carefully sculpted with care. A care that Tyler recognized with a look that was far less whimsical than his usual demeanor, and more of a genuine tenderness as he took the carving in his hand. “Oh, that darn man really knows how to spoil me rotten, doesn’t he?”

His smile widened as he looked back to Chutzpar. “You said he also had a message for me?”

Chutzpar nodded and reached into his pocket for a small stack of index cards. After taking a moment to shuffle them, he cleared his throat and began to read: “‘I am looking forward to Thursday. I was wondering if you would wear the panther shirt to dinner that I bought you in that two-for-one special. Panthers are powerful, and could tear a puma to—”

He casually flipped to the next index card, before gripping the entire stack tightly with both hands and ripping it in half a powerful yell of: ”—SHREDS!!!!’”

He held his stance for a moment, before slipping back into a more relaxed pose. “He specifically requested that I rip them up when I said ‘shreds’,” he explained. “It was an opportunity to be needlessly loud and violent in a healthy fashion, so I was in full support of the idea.”

“Aww, a show of force and a clever pun?” Tyler said, pressing his hands to his flushed face. “He really does know what I like~!”

He gave Chutzpar a wink. “Well, you be sure to tell Dan that I will certainly be wearing the panther shirt on Thursday!”

“Super,” Wendy said, her tone deadpan. “Can we go to the Shack now?”

“Of course, sorry for holding you up,” Tyler said with a laugh. “I suppose I should be getting back to work as well. This town’s not gonna mayor itself, after all~!”

“It might if you don’t learn how to break up fights without help,” Wendy muttered under her breath.

Tyler gave the group a little wave with the hand that held the wood carving. “Oh, and welcome back to town, Dipper and Mabel~! Can’t wait for the party tomorrow!”

With that, he turned and headed down the sidewalk in the opposite direction of the group, leaving Wendy to turn her attention to the twins. “So, you guys need a second to unpack everything that just happened, or are we good to continue on to the Shack?”

Dipper and Mabel shared a look, before Dipper took the initiative: “Yeah, so I have about a dozen questions—”

“What are the gnomes and Lilliputtians and all the other creatures doing walking around town?” Mabel interrupted quickly, with a wide gesture of her arms. “What’re you doing with a Manotaur? And why’s he giving Mayor Tyler gifts from your dad?!”

Dipper pointed to his sister. “Actually yeah, she covered pretty much all the questions I had,” he said, turning his full attention to her. “Except for the last part, because I feel like that’s pretty obvious, Mabel.”

Mabel placed her hands on her hips. “Duh-doy, I know it’s obvious. I just want to know when it started being a thing,” she explained. “I don’t remember hearing about it in any of the letters we got.”

Wendy made a face. “Yeah, it’s…kinda new.”

“They have been dating for four months,” Chutzpar pointed out.

“It’s new,” Wendy said flatly, before giving a shrug to the twins. “Anyway, the other stuff’s pretty easy to answer. Wanna swap stories as we head to the shack?”

“Yeah!” they answered in unison, before Dipper looked further up the road. “Kinda wish we’d asked the bus driver to stick around, though. The walk to the shack from here’s going to take forever.”

Wendy looked up at Chutzpar with a smirk, and he nodded knowingly in return. “Sounds like the two of you require a ride.”

Before either twin could question what he meant by ‘ride’, they suddenly found themselves being scooped up from the sidewalk and settled onto his muscular shoulders.

Wendy watched with a smile as they adjusted themselves. “You two chill up there?”

From the left shoulder, Dipper gave a thumbs up. “All good!”

Doubling over in a fit of giggles, Mabel reached over and grabbed hold of Chutzpar’s horn to steady herself. “Oh, this is way better than taking the bus~!”

Wendy let her gaze fall to the sidewalk below, where Waddles was staring up expectantly. “And while he’s got you, I’ll get—”

She bent down to pick him up, lifting him with just as little issue as his owner, and adjusted him until he was situated comfortably in her arms. “Woah, buddy, you feel a lot heavier than fifteen pounds this year!”

“I’ve fed him only the finest of leftover table scraps,” Mabel said proudly.

“And he used to sneak into my junk food stash at least once a week before I found a way to stop him,” Dipper said, giving Waddles a pointed look.

Waddles gave him a proud snort in response as Wendy took another quick glance at the sidewalk again. “Alright, no bags or any other random pets that you might’ve picked up since last year?”

“Bags are in our arms,” Dipper said, giving his a pat for good measure.

“And sadly no,” Mabel added in a solemn tone. “Mom said owning Waddles is like owning three pets in one. She says it as a compliment, because that just means he’s three times as lovable. But like we said before, he also just eats about as much as three animals so she don’t see any reason to get a fourth.”

This earned another proud snort from Waddles and a laugh from Wendy. “Sounds like an okay to begin walking, then.”

Chutzpar nodded, the sidewalk rumbling with every thunderous step he took as the group began their trek towards the winding trail on the edge of town.

— — — — — — —

“Mr. Pines, there’s no need to be so nervous.”

“What makes you think I’m nervous?”

From beside Soos, Grenda raised her hand. “The fact that you’re pacing in a circle so much, you’re practically digging a new bottomless pit with your feet?”

Candy turned to her, eyes bright with inspiration. “Ooh, if there are two of them, maybe they could be advertised as twin bottomless pits!” she said, holding up a finger on each hand. “Twin pits for twin pairs—“

She brought her fingers together with a smile. “—of twin Pines!”

Grenda let out a loud cackle, and gave her shoulder a hearty slap. “God, Candy, save some of that genius for when Mabel gets here!”

While Candy rubbed her now-sore shoulder with a wince, Soos gave the two of them a thumbs-up. “But I’m adding that to the list of attraction ideas when we get back to the shack. It’s a good one, dude.”

Stan looked down at the thin dent in the gravel that he’d worn down with his shoes, and crossed his arms with a gruff sigh. A sigh that was interrupted by the familiar sensation of a six-fingered hand on his shoulder.

His mouth curled into a smile as he locked eyes with the hand's owner, a near-identical set of features to his own staring back at him. “They raise a good point, Stanley,” Ford said. “Mostly about the nervousness, not the second bottomless pit idea.”

At that, he gave the girls a thumbs up. “But that is some impeccable wordplay, Candy!”

“My name gives me plenty of chances to make puns in everyday conversation,” Candy informed him with a smile. “It’s second nature to me at this point~!”

Stan tsked at that, although his smile didn’t disappear. “And who’s to say that pit-idea of theirs ain’t exactly what I’m doing?” he said. “Building some kinda new, twin-themed shack attraction with my feet?”

Candy held up another finger. “Shack-traction!”

“I said, stop! You’re gonna use up all the good ones!”

While the girls chattered on, Ford turned his gaze from them to Soos. “Actually, Soos, don’t you and the girls want to go, uh—” A pause. “—discuss that second bottomless pit idea further?”

Grenda ceased her attempt to give Candy a noogie of approval, and raised an eyebrow at him. “Why? He already said we’d—”

“Don’t worry, Dr. Pines!” Soos interrupted quickly, taking each of the girls’ hands in his own. “I’ll keep ‘em busy!”

Ford gave him an appreciative nod, one that Soos returned with a smile as he lead them away; not too far from the bus stop, but far enough to give the older men some space.

Once the three of them were at a distance that would make eavesdropping impossible, Stan playfully nudged his brother’s arm. “Real subtle there, Poindexter.”

“Wasn’t trying to be,” Ford said, as he turned back around to face him. “And even if I was, it’d be a lot more convincing than you’re trying to be about not being nervous.”

Stan rolled his eyes. “Hey, I’m the King of Subtlety! Or are you forgetting the New Jersey Lil' Wise Guy Subtlety Competition of 1956, where I took first place?”

“It was 1957,” Ford corrected him. “And I distinctly remember you quite literally taking the first place medal and attempting to pawn it off to one of the customers in the shop. Which failed, because you were three.”

Stan pressed a hand to his forehead. “Was it? Could’ve sworn it was—” With a huff, he waved it away. “Whatever, so maybe I’m a little nervous about seeing my great-niece and nephew again for the first time in nine months,” he said with a halfhearted shrug. “So what?”

“As I’m sure we’ve discussed at least two dozen times on the ride back to town—”

“Three dozen.”

“—there’s no reason to be nervous about seeing Dipper and Mabel again,” Ford finished. “If all the letters they sent to the Mystery Shack are anything to go off, they’re just as excited to see us as we are them.”

Stan waved his hand again, this time with the addition of a scoff. “Oh, I’m not worried about all that,” he explained. “I know the kids love us, and I know as soon as they step off that bus, I’m gonna put on the tough-as-nails, no-nonsense Grunkle act and pretend I wouldn’t erase my own mind for ‘em again if they needed me to—”

“Don’t joke about that.”

A shared look of somberness crossed their faces for a brief instant, before Stan’s gaze fell to the ground again. “It ain’t us I’m worried about,” he repeated. “They headed outta this place only a week after we barely managed to save it from going to heck in a handbasket. Barely managed to save them…”

His gaze returned to Ford. “Just don’t want them comin’ back to a whole boatload of new things to be worried about, you know?”

The hand on Stan’s shoulder moved to Ford’s own hair, which he pushed back with a tired sigh. “Don’t I know it. I’ve had this pit in my stomach for about two weeks now, both from the excitement of getting to spend the full summer with my great-niece and nephew and—”

He paused, before letting his hand fall back to his side with a weak laugh. “Well, I guess it was inevitable that our return to town would be accompanied by some…complicated emotions.”

Forgetting his own nerves for a moment, Stan’s attention immediately snapped to his brother. The shift in Ford’s features was subtle, as it always was whenever the topic of Bill came up in passing. But the pain behind Ford’s eyes, a pain that held the weight of the past thirty-plus years, and the way his entire body tensed from the memories that Stan could only assume made up that weight—

Stan shoved his hands in his pockets with a sigh. “Psh, listen to me gettin’ all worked up over the kids, when I should’ve been asking if you were alright.”

Ford looked to him, eyebrow raised. “Wh—no, that’s not the point. The point is—”

He was cut off by Stan slinging an arm around his shoulders, his knees buckling slightly from the extra weight. “The point is we’re both stressed,” Stan said. “And if we’re both stressed, then the kids are gonna end up stressed as well and that’ll just have the opposite effect of what we want. Like that law. You know, from that one guy?”

With his free hand, he snapped his fingers thoughtfully as he racked his brain for the answer. “Somethin’, somethin’, every action’s got a reaction and it’s opposite?”

An amused smile spread across Ford’s face. “Are you referring to Sir Isaac Newton and his laws of motion?” he asked. “Those laws by that world-renowned philosopher?”

“Hey, you’re the one that finished high school, Smart Guy, you tell me!”

Satisfied with his answer, he shifted the arm around Ford’s shoulder to pull him into a proper headlock. Ford attempted to slink out from beneath his brother’s embrace with a laugh, but unfortunately the past forty years had done little to weaken Stan’s technique and kept him locked as firmly in place as it had during their childhood.

On the other hand, three decades of wandering the Multiverse had provided Ford with a few defensive maneuvers of his own. Combined with spending the past nine months on a fishing boat together, it had taken little time for him to readapt to his brother’s attempts at rough-housing—

His gaze fell to Stan’s exposed ribs, to which he delivered a light—yet firm—jab with his elbow.

—and even less time for him to find the most effective methods of countering them.

Sure enough, Stan released him with a surprised yelp, one that melted into a fit of rough laughter as Ford effortlessly slipped out of his grasp. “Cheap shot.”

“I believe you’re the last person to talk when it comes to fighting dirty, Stanley,” Ford replied with a smug grin.

“Oh, I’ll show ya dirty—”

The laughter doubled as the two of them spent another moment attempting to one-up the other in lighthearted fisticuffs, until the distant, rumbling sound of tires against asphalt pulled them back to reality. And if the sight of the approaching bus alone hadn’t been enough, Grenda’s boisterous cry of “THE BUS IS COMING!” as the rest of the group hurried back to rejoin them would’ve done the trick.

As they straightened themselves out again in preparation to greet the kids, the brothers exchanged another look. One that clearly displayed their shared nervousness that even rough-housing hadn’t completely eliminated.

It was Stan who broke the awkward silence first, mouth curling into a halfhearted smile. “Guess we’d better give that Newton chump a call, huh?”

Ford managed a weak smile in return. “You realize you’ve wildly misinterpreted the laws of motion and their relation to the situation at hand, don’t you?”

“And you realize you’re a giant nerd, right?” Stan countered.

“Well, regardless of misinterpretation, you do raise a good point,” Ford said. “If we’re both stressed, then the kids are bound to pick up on it and get stressed in turn.”

He inhaled slowly, and exhaled slower. “It’s a new summer. A chance for everyone to start over.”

“You know it,” Stan said, lightly touching his knuckles against Ford’s arm. “And hey, uh—that doesn’t stop at summer. We don’t have to do anything alone ever again, right?”

They exchanged a look, silently lingering in their shared understanding for a moment before Ford spoke again: “You’re right, Stanley. We don’t have to do anything alone. Not now, not ever again.”

The two remained still for a moment more, before Stan reached over to give him a nudge. “And y’know, if that doesn’t work, I’m pretty sure I saw some kinda zombie-summoning spell in one of those nerd books of yours.” 

He crossed his arms. “I know we chucked them down into the Bottomless Pit, but I also know for a fact that you’ve got one’a’those smart-guy photographic-memories and could probably recite it off the top of your head.”

“Are you suggesting I use necromancy to summon Sir Isaac Newton?” Ford asked, the corners of his mouth twitching in amusement. “To prove his first law that you seem insistent on misinterpreting?”

“I mean, I ain’t telling you to give him a kiss on the cheek or nothin’,” Stan said.

Their smiles widened in amused unison as the bus finally slowed to a stop, the creaking of the brakes echoing loudly through the forest around them. Almost as if they were announcing the long-awaited arrival of the teenagers on board to anything within earshot.

And as the group watched, the older adults with tense shoulders while Soos and the girls all leaned into each other with excited anticipation, the doors of the bus slid open to reveal—

“Are you all looking to get on?”

—nothing more than the bus driver.

Candy blinked in confusion. “Have Dipper and Mabel turned invisible since we last saw then?”

Stan’s brow furrowed, balling one hand into a warning fist as he stared at the driver. “Yeah, pal, what gives?! Where’s our kids?”

“The ones from earlier?” the driver asked. “Oh, they got off somewhere in town. There were a buncha golfballs and gnomes in the road, said they’d take care of it and for me to just go on ahead without ‘em.”

He pressed a hand to his chin. "Good kids, though! The bus floor's practically sparkling thanks to that pet pig of theirs!"

“Did they tell you if they were going to walk the rest of the way or not?” Ford asked.

“I believe that’s what they said,” the driver said. “But seriously, is no one here going to get on?”

A varying chorus of ‘No’s earned the group a closed door, before the bus continued onwards down the road. After it eventually descended down a hill and out of sight, Grenda’s shoulders fell. “Aw, man! I was gonna pile drive Mabel into the ground as soon as she got off the bus! Now our whole ‘Welcome Back To The Falls’ greeting is ruined!”

Candy patted her arm sympathetically. “I am sure she would’ve appreciated the effort regardless.”

“Of course she would!” Grenda lamented, her loud voice booming through the nearby wood. “She’s an angel who appreciates when we go the extra mile!”

“Back in town for five minutes and they’re already getting caught up in some kind of weird shenanigans,” Ford said, swelling with pride. “They’re a couple of Pines, alright.”

Stan slapped a hand over his eyes, and dragged it down the rest of his face. “Yeah, a pair from your side of the family, maybe.” 

It was said in exasperation, but there was an undeniable fondness in his tone. One that transferred to his expression as he turned to the rest of the group. “Alright, on one hand: the kids know the way to the Shack like the backs of their own hands and they’ll probably get here just fine on foot,” he pointed out. “On the other—”

“Getting here could take a while and none of us want to wait that long to see them again, so we go and meet them halfway?” Soos guessed.

“You got it.”

From beside his brother, Ford shot a glance down the road from whence the bus had came. “Looks like halfway might be closer than we think.”

He pointed a finger for emphasis, and the rest of the group followed his gesture to the sight of an approaching Manotaur coming up the road. One that was delightfully conversing with the two thirteen-year-olds seated on each of his shoulders, and the sixteen-year-old walking beside him.

A conversation that had been clearly happening since the four of them had been back in town, Dipper and Mabel’s attention fully fixed on Wendy as she continued to speak: “—and after everyone teamed up during Weirdmageddon, the vibes of the town just kinda shifted. As if a lot of the weird stuff in town suddenly realized: ‘Hey, we’re not much of a mystery anymore so there’s not really a reason to keep hiding’, and the people in town realized they weren’t as weird and terrifying as they originally thought.”

She pressed a finger to her temple. “Combine that with the Society of the Blind Eye going belly up and leaving no one around to go blasting memories out of people’s heads—” Then pressed her hands together and laced her fingers for emphasis. “—everyone and everything just kinda started mushing together over time.”

“Manly Dan caught news of us Manotaurs when we were forced to relocate our Man Cave,” Chutzpar added. “Impressed by our manliness and feats of strength, he offered us jobs in his lumberyard. We told him we’d only accept if the toughest combatants from his family defeated us in battle.”

“And you guys lost to him?” Mabel guessed.

“Not to him.”

Chutzpar cast a gaze down at Wendy, and the twins followed suit in the hopes of further elaboration. “Originally, it was just going to be Dad and my brothers in the fight,” she explained. “Not because Dad didn’t think to ask me; I was at work at the time and happened to come home just as all of them were getting their butts handed to ‘em on a silver platter.”

“It was a mighty battle of strength and determination,” Chutzpar said in a faraway tone. “They fought well, even if their efforts were inevitably in vain.”

“Nearly in vain,” Wendy corrected. “But then I showed up and volunteered to finish the fight.”

“And they let you?”

“Of course not, the big meatheads all laughed at the idea of fighting a girl. But then I punched one of ‘em in the gut, and suplexed another into the ground, where he got stuck by his horns.”

This got a laugh out of her. “Taking down the rest wasn’t too hard, since Dad and the others had already worn most of 'em down. But even if they hadn’t, it wouldn’t have been difficult. Their fighting style was all punch, no technique. Even an amateur could’ve taken all of them down with a few well-placed hits.”

She shrugged with amusement. “That was also why Dad wasn’t able to win against them; he fights the exact same way. It was just lunkhead against lunkhead out there, swinging fists wildly until at least one of ‘em hit something. And unfortunately for my lunkheaded family, they didn’t have as many fists as the Manotaurs to keep swinging around. Until I showed up, at least.”

While the twins giggled at the visual image, Chutzpar gave a stoic nod. “The Manotaurs lost the battle that day, but it was a loss we hold with pride,” he said, with a shift of the arm that held Dipper. “One that taught us that—between her and the things you taught us last year, Destructor—we have plenty to learn about what it means to be men.”

He gave his chest a hearty thump. “And that sometimes that manliest men among us are actually girls!”

Dipper raised a mildly-confused eyebrow at Wendy, who shrugged in response. “Eh, they’re still a little confused but it’s better than where they were last year,” she said, shoving her hands in her pockets. “Not to mention being called the Manliest Man in Gravity Falls kinda hits in a way I’m not complaining about—”

“Kids!”

At the sound of another voice hailing them from further ahead, Dipper and Mabel turned their gazes forward to see their welcome party hurrying towards them from the opposite direction. Grenda and Candy were bringing up the rear with Soos, while Ford was keeping a steady pace in the middle. 

But at the very front of the group, Stan was charging towards them with a speed and passion that couldn’t be matched by anyone else.

Except perhaps by Mabel, who had quickly jumped down from Chutzpar’s shoulder at the sound of his voice and began to sprint towards her great-uncle at Mach speed. “Grunkle Stan!”

It was a miracle that the two of them remained standing, with how hard they crashed into one another in a bone-crushing embrace; Mabel linking her arms around Stan’s neck like a spider monkey while he spun her around with a hearty belly laugh. 

Only for that miracle to shatter when the embrace of two became three as Dipper caught up to them, and all of them tumbled to the ground in a mess of laughter. “What, are you kids tryna kill me before we even get to the Shack?” Stan asked, slinging an arm around Dipper’s body. “I don’t remember the two’a’you being this big last year.”

Mabel let out a little giggle and pressed her hands to his face. “Yeah, well, you weren’t this hairy last year!” she pointed out in return. “I mean you were still really hairy, but now you’ve got a full-grown beard!”

“Sure do!” Stan said brightly, and patted the hair covering his chin. “Ol’ Poindexter and I made a decision early on that if we were spendin’ our days as men of the sea, then we were sure as heck gonna look the part!”

Mabel pressed her own hands to her mouth, stifling a laugh. “You sound like Dipper at Hanukkah! He was soooooo excited to show Grandpa Shermie his beard~!”

The last word was said with clear amusement, and Dipper shrank a bit before slapping his hands over his face. “Mabel, come on, you don’t have to—”

“Oh, didja grow one too?” Stan asked, peering at him. “Come on, Slick, let’s see those Pines genetics at work.”

After a moment of hesitation, Dipper nervously lowered his hands and Stan leaned closer to examine the few, noticeable hairs on his chin. “I know it’s not much,” Dipper explained quickly. “But it’s more than I had last year! A-and Mom says that I’m bound to get more as I get older!”

With a proud laugh, Stan reached up to ruffle his hat. “You kidding? That’s more than I had at that age!” he said. “You be proud of those few hairs, and don’t let your sister steal ‘em for her scrapbook.”

“Too late,” Mabel said brightly. “I stole both one from the chin and one from the shin~! He has some there, too!”

Dipper gave her a pointed look, before turning back to Stan with a more confident smile. “I’d be more annoyed at her for that if she wasn’t right,” he said, and held up his leg. “Because look, I got so much on my legs, too!”

“Woa-hoh, get a load of Mister Big Man over here!” Stan said, and brought him closer for a noogie. “Those genetics really are kickin’ in early for you, huh?”

“He’s not the only one they’ve kicked in for,” Mabel added. “Or should I say—”

She kicked out one of her own legs with a cheeky grin. “—kicked~!”

There was a moment of pause, before she gave her leg another wiggle. “You get it because—”

“Mabel also got leg hair,” Dipper clarified. “If that wasn’t obvious.”

“I tried shaving it at first, but it just made my legs soooooo itchy,” Mabel said. "So now I just have built-in leg warmers!”

“I’d suggest the fire method, but it’s far more effective at removing facial hair than body hair,” a voice behind them said. “Also something tells me that your parents wouldn’t be too happy if we sent you back home with burns on your legs.”

The trio looked up to see Ford standing before them, a hand outstretched. “Room in the dirt for one more?”

A series of grins were exchanged before three hands reached for Ford’s in unison and pulled him down to the ground with them. “It’s good to see you again, Grunkle Ford!” Dipper said. 

“Especially since we actually know you exist now!” Mabel added. “This time last year, we still thought Grunkle Stan was you! And then when we did find out that you were you and he was him, we only got to spend a little bit of time with you!”

Her arms moved from around Stan’s neck to Ford's, her spider-monkey grip once again unbreakable as she hugged him tight. “But this year, we get to spend aaaaallllllll summer with both our Grunkles!”

Ford’s smile widened and he slinked an arm around her as Stan piped up with: “That’s right, Pumpkin! No more mysteries or weird demons or monsters or anything that’s gonna get in the way of me spendin’ time with you kids and my brother!”

“Well, I mean, a monster here and there’s not a bad thing—” Ford begin, just as Dipper finished with a: “I wouldn’t mind a mystery or two, honestly.”

The four of them doubled over in laughter as the remaining party from both directions finally caught up to them. “Aww, you guys are having a cuddle pile in the dirt without us?” Grenda piped up unhappily.

“Candy adds a dash of sweetness to every cuddle pile!” Candy added.

“Or did the squirts knock you down ‘cause you’re older than the dirt you’re sitting in?” Wendy chimed in, as her and Chutzpar also came to a stop.

“Watch it, Corduroy,” Stan said, pulling his arm out from around Dipper so he could point a finger at her. “Just ‘cause I’m not your boss anymore doesn’t mean I can’t ask Soos to fire you.”

Wendy raised an eyebrow in Soos’ direction. “Would you fire me if he asked?”

“Uh…” Soos shifted uncomfortably in place. “Do I really have to answer that?”

This got a disbelieving “Wow.” out of Wendy and a delighted cackle out of Stan, one that was cut short by a grunt of pain as he shifted in place. “Ow, maybe we should get up outta all this dirt and gravel,” he muttered. “I got rocks in place I don’t wanna mention in front of a bunch of impressionable teenagers, my brother, or Soos.”

Soos offered him a hand. “Maybe we can move the cuddle pile to the Shack, then? Then Melody can join us!”

With a look of disgust, Stan took his hand and pulled himself to his feet. “Pass. Last thing any of us needs is for you two to start making kissy faces at each other.”

“Keep that in mind,” Wendy muttered with a grin.

“Soos does raise an excellent point about making our way the Shack,” Ford said. “The sooner the kids get settled in, the sooner we can exchange stories.”

He emphasized the last word with a knowing look to his brother, and Stan’s mouth spread into a wide grin as he offered his own hands to the kids. “Hey, yeah! You squirts wanna hear about the time your Grunkles tore the head off a Kraken along the coast of Texas?” he asked with a wink. “‘Cause lemme tell ya: when they say everything’s bigger down there, they mean everything!”

Dipper and Mabel exchanged a unanimous “Yeah!” as they were also pulled to their feet—

“Nope! I said I was giving Mabel a proper ‘Welcome Back’ pile drive, and I’m gonna do it!”

—and Mabel was immediately brought back down to the tampered dirt path by a charging Grenda, any pain from the impact momentarily drowned in a fit of giggles as she hugged her friend. “Oh, it’s just as spine-shattering as I hoped it’d be!”

“Don’t forget Candy, for a dash of sweetness!” Candy piped up, as she flopped over the other two with a laugh. “I made that pun already, but it was so nice, I had to say it twice!”

“Agreed, it was hilarious!” Mabel agreed, arms going around both of them in a tight embrace. “Ugh, I missed you girls sooooo much! I’ve got loads to tell you since my last letter—ooh, also I’ve got a phone now!”

While Mabel attempted to fish her phone out of her pocket, Wendy cast a smirk to the adults. “Anyone wanna bet that we won’t get to the Shack until nightfall?”

Chutzpar looked down at her. “I respect a show of friendly violence, but should I intervene again?

“You know you don’t have to listen to me,” Wendy said, folding her arms. “I’m not, like, actually in charge of you guys or anything.”

“I’m aware.”

“And I don’t take any bets I know I’ll lose,” Stan said, and snapped his fingers at the girls. “Hey, come on, I know we’re all excited to be seein’ each other again.”

He pointed a finger at Grenda, which shifted between her and Candy. “But I already told you two that I need at least one night without wondering if a family of bats moved into my attic, or if you girls are tryin’ to break the sound barrier with your squeals.”

“Seconding that,” Dipper piped up quickly. “I would also like a buffer between now and the inability to sleep in my own room, please.”

The girls let out a disappointed chorus of ‘Awwwww’s as they untangled themselves and returned to their feet. “But Grunkle Staaaaan, I missed my people!” Mabel argued.

“And her people missed her!” Grenda added, squeezing her close.

“Never said you couldn’t hang out with ‘em after tonight,” Stan pointed out. “Plus there’s that party tomorrow—”

“Oh, yeah!” Grenda said excitedly. “We can catch up at the party!”

“We can catch up on stories while we tear up the dance floor!” Candy added with an excited wiggle, before she raised her fists to the air. “And remind this town who the real party animals are!”

She let her arms fall again. “Plus my parents said that I needed to come home after we said hi to you, anyway,” she explained further, then added as an afterthought: “Hi, Mabel!”

With a giggle, Mabel replied: “Hi, Candy!”

“And I got my pile drive in, so I guess I did everything I wanted to do today,” Grenda added with a shrug.

While Stan leaned close to Ford with a quiet: “I’d point out that it was more of a tackle than a pile drive, but also I don’t wanna be out here longer than we hafta be.” (earning a “Smart call.” from Ford in return), Mabel tightened her grip around the other girls. “Well, when you put it that way, I guess I can wait another day to hang out with my beeeeest friends in the whoooolllllle world~!”

Candy’s gaze moved over to Wendy and Chutzpar. “By the way, we saw that Dipper and Mabel got a Manotaur ride up here,” she said. “Is there an option to catch a Manotaur ride back to town?”

“Ooh, me too! Me too!” Grenda added. “Wendy, make him give us a ride!”

“Once again, I’m not in charge of the Manotaurs,” Wendy pointed out, with another look to Chutzpar. “It’s up to you, pal. You offering rides back to town?”

Chutzpar held out both hands for them to take. “Small girls who greet their friends with violent pile drivers are worthy of a ride,” he said, before raising an eyebrow at Wendy. “But will you be alright getting home?”

“I can always hitch a ride from someone,” Wendy assured him. “Or—”

She reached into her pocket for her phone, and glanced at the screen for a moment. “—yeah, or I can just spend the night at the Shack if I really need to.”

“Aw, what?” Grenda said unhappily from Chutzpar’s shoulder. “How come you get to spend the night and we don’t?”

“Good-bye, girls,” Stan said, and gave Wendy a pointed stare. “Tell the big guy to go.”

“I’m not—” Wendy started to say, then shrugged it off and gave Chutzpar a wave of her hand. “Go ahead.”

Chutzpar gave her a nod in return, and turned back towards the direction of the town. “Let’s make haste, small female children,” he said, and began to walk. ”I have a response from Mayor Tyler to deliver to Manly Dan about their Thursday plans.”

“We are teenagers now, you know,” Grenda pointed out with a mild huff of indignance. “Or at least I am.”

“Ooh, is the response a loooove message~?” Candy added delightedly. “Are the plans a date?”

“Oh, you know it—!”

Chutzpar’s voice echoed through the wood with amusement, the volume only matched in power by Grenda’s laughter as the trio drew further and further away from those who had stayed behind. Eventually though, even their powerful baritones could not be carried such a distance, and the forest around the group fell silent again.

Silent, until—

“So, we’re not gonna question the big man-cow thing?” Stan asked. “We’re just acting like he’s been here the entire time, then?”

Ford shrugged in response. “He was clearly a Manotaur, and one that seemed to be on good terms with Wendy and the kids,” he said. “Didn’t see any reason to question his presence.”

“He’s visited the Shack several times,” Soos chimed in as well. “Also he was staying with us in the Shack during Weirdmageddon.”

“Did he?” Stan said. “Huh, feel like I should remember that.”

“I also met him and the rest of the herd last year,” Dipper added, just as Mabel chimed in with her own: “The Manotaurs work for Wendy now, and also Manly Dan is dating Mayor Tyler!”

Wendy made a twirling motion with her finger. “What they all said, minus the ‘working for me’ thing. They’re part of my dad’s logging crew now, and even if they listen to me when I ask them to do stuff, I don’t want anything to get weird with that.”

“And the part about your dad and Mayor Tyler?” Stan asked, an eyebrow raised.

Wendy’s expression shifted for half a second, before her usual, disinterested grin took its place. “Hey, here’s something I never thought I’d hear myself say: let’s stop standing around and doing nothing, and get to the Shack so I’m not late for my shift!”

Soos raised a hand. “Uh, but Wendy, I’m your boss and it’s your day off—”

“Race you knuckleheads there~!”

Wendy took off like a shot before Soos could finish his point, taking great care to lightly plap a hand against the heads of the younger twins and deliver a loving fist to the arms of the adults as she zipped between them and ran towards the direction of the Mystery Shack.

With a laugh, the younger twins sprinted after her in a rush with cries of: “Wait for us!” and “How are you running that fast with a pig in your arms?”

The adults watched them go for a moment, before Soos turned to the Stans: “...We don’t actually have to run all the way back there, do we?”

Stan, who had been watching Wendy and the kids race ahead, pulled his attention back to Soos. “Absolutely not,” he said flatly, and pressed a hand to his back. “Especially not after the kids knocked me down like that.”

He winced as the three of them began to follow after the kids at a much slower pace. “Gonna be feeling that for at least a few days.”

“Well, at least it’s a sign that we won’t have to give Sir Isaac Newton a call,” Ford pointed out with a smile. “With the way the kids tackled you, there’s zero doubt that they’re thrilled to be back.”

Once again, Stan mirrored his smile with one of his own. “Yeah, well, if they keep on bein’ that thrilled, you’re gonna have to bust out that necromancy spell to talk to me.”

Ford’s expression tensed for a moment at his brother’s joke, but any unease passed just as quickly as it had come when the sight of the familiar old cabin peered into view ahead of them.

#Hayley Writes Triangulum #Gravity Falls #Triangulum The Fic #Dipper Pines #Mabel Pines #Stanley Pines #Stanford Pines #My Writing #Long Post #(There's more characters but those four are on the poster so they get tags)

[ohgaylor]

afterglow 🤝 hoax 🤝 the great war 🤝 death by a thousand cuts 🤝 long story short (parallels / analyses)

always remember // flashbacks waking me up // flashes of the battle come back to me in a blur // I tried to pick my battles 'til the battle picked me

my knuckles were bruised like violets, sucker punching walls // fighting with a true love is boxing with no gloves // don't want no other shade of blue but you // I blew things out of proportion, now you're blue, put you in jail for something you didn’t do // and maybe it's the past that's talking, screaming from the crypt telling me to punish you for things you never did, so I justified it

I lived like an island, punished you with silence // cursed you as I sleep-talked, spineless in my tomb of silence // misery like the war of words I shouted in my sleep // my sleepless night, my winless fight

somewhere in the haze, got a sense I'd been betrayed // my best laid plan, your sleight of hand // paper cut stings from our paper-thin plans // your finger on my hairpin triggers // my twisted knife // you knew the password so I let you in the door // my only one, my smoking gun, my eclipsed sun, this has broken me down

tore your banners down, took the battle underground // I look through the windows of this love, even though we boarded them up // I drew curtains closed, drank my poison all alone // chandelier's still flickering here 'cause I can't pretend it's okay when it's not

and what once was ours is no one's now I see you everywhere, the only thing we share is this small town // you know I left a part of me back in New York // my kingdom come undone // our country, guess it was a lawless land

stood on the cliffside screaming, "give me a reason" // long story short, it was a bad time, pushed from the precipice, climbed right back up the cliff

I don’t wanna lose, I don't wanna lose this with you // that was the night I nearly lost you, I really thought I'd lost you // this has frozen my ground // soldier down on that icy ground, looked up at me with honor and truth, broken and blue, so I called off the troops // thought I had reason to attack, but no // when I dropped my sword, I threw it in the bushes and knocked on your door

the worst was over, my hand was the one you reached for all throughout the great war // your faithless love's the only hoax I believe in // no more keepin' score, now I just keep you warm // we're burned for better // I am ash from your fire // always remember the burning embers

no more tug of war, now I just know there's more // this ultraviolet morning light below tells me this love is worth the fight // and we will never go back to that bloodshed, crimson clover // I vowed I would always be yours ‘cause we survived the Great War // and we live in peace, but if someone comes at us, this time, I'm ready

#lyric*connections #they tell the same story!!!!! #taylor swift #afterglow #hoax #the great war #death by a thousand cuts #long story short #parallels #analysis #mine #gaylor #anyway these motifs are rather significant if you ask me #folklore #midnights #lover #evermore #taylor swift parallels

[afternoonsociety]

*ೃ༄ The Sound of Two Different Hearts - Part Three - Neteyam x Human!Fem!Reader

warnings: neteyam being jealousy of Spider, a little bit angst, neteyam and reader still denying their feelings for each other,

This part felt kinda rushed. I had a very stressful week at work but I hope you still like it , let me know if you want to be tagged in the next part

word count: 4.6k

synopsis: During the feast, Neteyam becomes jealous of Spider and Y/N, and on top of that, his parents demand that he finds himself a mate.

— Part One — Part Two — Part Three — Part Four

other websites: ao3 // wattpad

Y/N waited at the other end of the glade until Neteyam also came after her. He had an annoyed expression on his face. Why did Tuk have to come now of all times? And why did the food have to be ready now? With every more step he wished he could turn back time, to be in her arms again and hold her forever, so she wouldn't run away and he could finally confess his love to her. And to finally be able to seal their love with a kiss.

She held out her hand for Nete to take. In the meantime, Tuk ran forward full of joy and waved her arms around her as if she was flying. When she was out of sight, Neteyam took Y/N's hand and together they returned hand in hand to the village. He already couldn't get enough of holding her hand and clasped it tighter the closer they got.

They drew a few stares as they stepped onto the Omatikaya ground, first and foremost from their friends and siblings. Y/N was beaming over both ears and Kiri rooted from afar for Y/N that they had both finally managed to express their feelings and that they belonged together.

Lo'ak, however, could only laugh stupidly when he saw the slightly strained expression on his big brother's face. However Kiri and Lo'ak did not know yet that it didn't come to the large confession as they had hoped for.

While Y/N and `Teyam were looking for the others in the crowd to sit down with them, Neyetam's clan friends suddenly came to him and pulled him along with them full of laughter. One could only half guess that they had something of a funny story to tell. As Neteyam now disappeared into the group, Spider came up to her to tell her where Kiri and the rest were. She sat down and engaged in the conversation the others had before. But somehow her side felt bare without Neteyam. By the fire, Y/N was desperately looking for Nete on the other side, where he sat with his friends. She was a little crestfallen that he let himself be pulled away so easily. Of course she understood that he had other friends besides her and Spider, but after what had happened in the meadow, she would have liked to spend some more time with him. It had just felt too beautiful, like a dream. To be able to touch him and admire him. To trace his markings with her fingers. Counting his individual freckles and feeling his warmth. He just looked so damn good in the dim light.

She was gushing so much that she didn't even notice that the food was being served. There was grilled hexapede meat and teylu. Spider handed her an extra wooden board full of teylu, since it was her favorite Na'vi dish. She was surprised how quickly she got used to the Na'vi diet and how quickly she grew fond of it. For one thing, she liked Teylu so much because she couldn't get enough of the unique taste and that it was safe for her to eat as a human. And on the other hand because of the story Lo'ak told her years ago, which was about his father eating teylu for the first time and it almost stuck in his throat when Neytiri told him that it was grilled insect-like larvae. However, not wanting to be rude, he told Neytiri that it tasted almost exactly like his „grandmother's teylu“.

As she ate, her eyes again wandered to the other side, finally finding Neteyam. He had spotted her earlier and looked at her as if he wanted to go over and take her back with him. He literally stared at her as if there was something on his lips that he desperately wanted to tell her. But Kiri interrupted their eye contact when she asked what had happened between the two.

"And what happened between you and him? Did you finally kiss?"

"Shh, Kiri, not so loud. No we didn't kiss. We just sat in the grass and talked," Y/N said, a certain redness slowly rising in her cheeks again as she recalled. "Something else happened, or why are you blushing now, heh?" replied Kiri with a grin. "We somehow got closer, he had touched me. I took thereupon all my courage together and sat down on his lap. We held each other in our arms, but nothing more happened" Kiri was a little disappointed, she knew that Y/N was a little shy around Nete, but she would have expected something else from her brother.

Before Y/N could start talking out about the situation again, Miles arrived from the side and started playing with the food. He waved a piece of teylu in front of Y/N's face to play airplane. He made plane noises with his mouth and came closer and closer with his hand to her face. "Watch out Y/N here comes the teylu plane" She opened her mouth but on purpose he missed it and poked it to her left cheek, then her right and then her chin. Y/N understood his joke and started fooling around with him. "Miles, cut it out," she said and next slapped his hand away and took the teylu from his hand and popped it into her mouth. He then poked her in the ribs and she let out a little shriek. That was only the beginning of their numerous playfights. Spider kept poking and at some point started tickling her. Y/N defended herself by lashing out and tried to do the same to him. It escalated only after a few seconds and they were wrestling with each other. Miles pushed her to the ground and held both of her hands to keep on annoying her. She squirmed back and forth and used all her strength to free herself from his grip. Then she pushed her hand into his face to keep Spider at a distance. Holding his head back, he kept trying to reach for her and didn't give up. At last he tore himself free, wrapped his arms around her and pulled her down with him. Miles laid on the floor with Y/N on top of him hugging her tightly. "Don't be mad, will you?" he said with a laugh, beaming a grin at her. Slightly annoyed, Y/N then replied, "I love you too Miles," and began to ruffle his hair. Tuk Tuk cheered them on and was disappointed that the "fight" between the two was over so quickly. Furthermore, they drew more stares from the other Omaticaya, most notably Neteyam's gaze. Which darkened from this second to the next.

He sat there with a tension and had to watch how someone else touched the girl he loved so much. He was more than annoyed, almost angry, that both of them just fooled around and lay together in each other's arms. He couldn't believe that Y/N would just let Miles touch her like that. He was jealous, so jealous that he interpreted the touching as something else and not just as a display of brotherly affection. He was jealous of Miles that he could just start a play fight without having to be careful about using too much force and not hurting her because of his stature. He was jealous that Y/N didn't touch him like that, even though the previous encounter between the two was very intimate for him. He felt no amusement in watching the two of them. After all, hadn't Y/N felt the connection in the meadow between the two of them? Did she care so little? Was she so oblivious to his feelings - that he didn't exactly express directly? What would have happened if he had kissed her, would she have pushed him away and told him she didn't feel the way he did? So many thoughts flashed through his mind that he couldn't watch it anymore, which is why he stood up abruptly and escaped the scene. He needed to cool down. He would like to punch a tree, but even that wouldn't bring his emotions down now. His friends were still calling after him, but he didn't respond. He needed to be alone now.

Slowly it was time to say goodbye, it was already late at night and Y/N was starting to get tired. She was crestfallen that it had unfortunately passed so quickly. Miles and Y/N made their way home so that Norm and the other scientists wouldn't have to worry. She hugged Kiri last and then asked, "Have you seen Neteyam anywhere? Earlier he was still sitting at the fire but was gone so suddenly? I wanted to wish him good night"

"I haven't seen him since we ate. I don't know where he is," Lo'ak replied.

She got sad when she heard that Neteyam was nowhere to be found. The evening with him was special and she wanted to thank him. Feeling disappointed, she then made her way home with her head hanging low.

Meanwhile, Neteyam had withdrawn to his hammock. He wanted to say goodbye to Y/N when she left, but he was just too angry and could not bear to see Miles any longer. His jealousy consumed his body and he decided to replay the pleasant part of the day by closing his eyes.

The next few days weren't the easiest for Neteyam. He was even more confused than before. There was a complete chaos of emotions inside him, which he unfortunately took out on the others around him. Especially on Miles. Since the night he couldn't stand to look him in the eye, so blinded was he by his jealousy and his wrong interpretation. He was harsh to him every time he did any misdeeds with Lo'ak again. He was not afraid to put him in his place in front of the whole group. Once it even got so bad that Neteyam came marching towards Spider with big steps, towering over him with his body and looking at him with a burning gaze. Then the lecture about a small thing Spider did began. The others didn't understand why Nete suddenly became so aggressive and when the situation seemed to escalate, Y/N desperately stepped in and put her hand on Neteyam's chest. For a moment his anger seemed to disappear as he looked first at her hand on his body and then into her shocked eyes. She didn't know what had gotten into him. Why was he like this? Did something happen between them? The young woman asked herself in her thoughts. She hadn't noticed anything, though. Y/N tried to descalate the situation further. "Nete calm down. What's wrong with you?" But he only scoffed and turned on his heel to go somewhere else.

A voice inside him only confirmed his suspicions and anxiety began to settle in him that it would be better for the two of them if they would rather find someone from their own species.

Overwhelmed with the situation, Y/N had to sit down for a while. It was just so strange that Nete had changed so much, that he got angry so quickly and when confronted he took off without paying attention to anyone. It also seemed to her like he was avoiding her. Every time she tried to talk to him about it, he just blocked and left her standing. Moreover, only a few words were spoken between them. Y/N was worried about her friend, because it certainly wasn't his way of dealing with her and the people around him.

While Y/N was still wondering what could have happened, Neteyam walked past his family's hut. His parents noticed his presence and his mother Neytiri called out to him. "Neteyam! Will you come join us for a moment?" He turned and walked toward his mother. His father was waiting in the hut and asked him to sit down. "Neteyam, we need to talk to you." Nete thought at first that his parents wanted to address him on his quick-tempered behavior, but the following sentence from Neytiri shocked him. "Ma Nete, we already know you're grown up now and we think it's about time you find yourself a mate" Then Jake started to continue the conversation. "What your mother is trying to tell you is that we never see you with other girls from the clan and just wanted to carefully ask if you have already thought about the subject" Neteyam was stunned and embarrassed by the statements that his mouth hung open like a fish. Of course he didn't hang around other girls when his desired mate Y/N was right in front of him. But how should he explain this now? Especially now towards his mother, who always let the two humans know that she only tolerated them because her husband wanted it that way. He had no interest in others, he wanted alone only Y/N. Since their eldest son didn't say anything, the parents began to continue talking.

"You must know Velai, right? Ninat's daughter. She's a good girl and a good huntress. She would suit you. She is also very family-oriented. Velai is very affectionate with her siblings and the other children" He tried to imagine in his inner eye what it would be like to be with Velai, but in his mind could only imagine the human girl Y/N, with whom he grew up. The girl he knew as well as the rainforests of Pandora. Even though at the moment it didn't seem that way and the relationship was just beginning to crumble, he would fight for Y/N to choose him. She would in the very end become his mate, not some girl of the Omatikaya, not Velai, he just wanted Y/N. And whatever it would take to convince his mother and father that he had fallen in love with one of the Sky People, he would do it. Even if it seemed impossible.

Y/N went in search of him during the time Neteyam was staying with his parents. On the way, she passed by his family's home and heard people inside. Maybe he was hiding here, she thought. She walked towards the curtain and that was when she heard the voices of Neytiri and Jake. Y/N got curious and walked closer. She knew it was wrong to eavesdrop on them, but she just couldn't help it. And when she heard the words "Neteyam", " mate", "Ninat's daughter" she stayed rooted to the spot. Shock spread through her and she swallowed a big lump. They were talking about Nete finding a mate, since he was mature enough. She didn’t know how to react, it was none of her business to judge, but it hurt inside her. The encounter in the clearing had been her missed chance to tell him about her feelings. She touched him to show him that she liked him. But maybe her intentions were not clear enough and he just thought she was too curious. Tears came to her eyes when she noticed that Neteyam said nothing to his parents. The silence for her was an agreement on `Teyam's part that he would accept the proposal and wanted to meet Velai. When she noticed a rustling in the Sully's home, she quickly took off so no one would catch her eavesdropping and that she was there at all. Y/N ran to her special place, the clearing. She sat down and more and more tears welled up in her eyes. After some time she got up from her huddled state and saw that the Atokirina were gathering around her again. They floated weightlessly around her, some resting on her head. She looked up and saw that one of the woodsprites was moving toward her hand. She played with it, giving it momentum with her hand, it would fly back up and then it came back towards her. She sat there longer, enjoying the presence of the Atokirina. It was getting dark and the little creatures decided to leave Y/N. A thought came into her head that it was unusual for the woodsprites to come to this place. She had never seen the jellyfish-like creatures here before and she had been coming to this clearing for years. They appeared only the first time when she and Neteyam sat here together and now a second time.

Was it another sign from Eywa? This can't be a coincidence, Y/N thought to herself. And then she made a decision. It was surely a sign from Eywa, it simply couldn't be anything else. She wanted to show her that it was the right thing to fight for Neteyam and to show him that she loved him. She then gathered all her courage and decided to show Neteyam and his family that she would be a worthy mate for him. No matter what she had to do for that, she would do everything in her power for it. The hardest part, however, would be showing Neytiri that even a human could be good enough for her son. With Jake she was less worried, because she could still play the you-were-a-human-once-too card and maybe convince him. She wanted to go on her way again and wiped her face to get rid of the tears that had almost dried. Now began her battle of approval.

As if enough wasn't already happening in everyone's lives, now it came to the worst. Jake came back to the clan one day with terrible news. The Sky People had come to Pandora again. This time they were said to be stronger in weapons and machinery and also in adapting to the habitat by creating a new kind of dreamwalker. The RDA had set the goal of taking over Pandora once and for all, so they could finally continue their plan to exploit the planet. Jake called a crisis gathering, with the other Omatikaya warriors and the rest of the humans, to formulate a strategic plan for how they would proceed. He had hoped all these years that the danger was finally gone and his family and clan were finally free from the evil humans' machinations.

The meeting with the councils took hours, if not even days, everything had to be planned strategically, because if it was up to Jake's gut feeling, that he was certain the RDA would track him down. Now that he also had family and was the clan chief, he simply had too many points of attack to get to him. And he didn't want to risk losing his family because of himself.

As the Olo'eyktan, Jake finally decided that they would relocate the clan, to the Hallelujah Mountains. There they built a camp with the humans, which they named High Camp. It now became the temporary home of the Omatikaya.

The children of the Sullys and also Neytiri herself didn't like the idea of leaving their home, the forest and their Hometree behind, but the safety of all outweighed their own feelings.

In the new home everything was different, it was dark between the mountains and there were hardly any luminous plants like those to be found in the forest. The most affected was Tuk Tuk, who didn't want to leave the forest at all, but her mother reassured her that it would only be a temporary measure and that they wouldn't stay here forever. She could still play with her siblings in the forest. Because of the Omatikaya's quick adaptability, the High Camp was quickly set up and made home. Y/N also helped vigorously with the new setup. She supported everyone as much as she could. It was, after all, her second family. But for Jake, this was not all. Jake was not a person who would hide in the shadows, no, he would fight as he had done back then.

In the time of new beginnings, things between Y/N and Neteyam continued to crumble. He spent more time with Velai at his parents' request, even though he didn't really want to. Sometimes it got to the point where they ignored each other, and now that the Sky People were coming back, they both had a short temper from all the tension. In addition, Jake fully involved his sons in the plans, so there was hardly any time left for the two of them. Y/N did everything she could to stay close to Neteyam, even if it meant putting herself in dangerous situations. But today she was not a part of it.

To prevent the RDA from exploiting Pandora further, Jake decided to lead an ongoing strategic guerrilla operation aimed at weakening the RDA supply lines. In this mission, a raid on a maglev train, the Olo'eyktan had decided to send his two sons Neteyam and Lo'ak as spotters. They had been told to fly over the area with their Ikrans and let their father know what the situation was like from above. But as Lo'ak always was, namely rebellious, he wanted to prove to himself and his father that he could fight as well as the other warriors in the clan. He tried to persuade his brother to come to the battlefield with him. Nete, however, didn't think much of his plan and told his little brother, "Don't do that. Dad would skin us" But since Lo'ak was so stubborn, he didn't let go of his plan and flew down with his Ikran. "Lo'ak come back here" Nete called after him, but he didn't hear it anymore, Nete let out an annoyed yell and then followed his brother. While now Lo'ak with his big brother in tow disobeyed their father, and now stood down on the battlefield, more and more RDA forces in Kestrel gunships were coming to them. Even though Lo'ak was initially convinced that he could handle a Sky People firearm, since Jake had "taught" him, he was overwhelmed by the brutality of the people. Neteyam did everything to protect his little brother, but in the end he overestimated himself and Nete was wounded.

Jake, however, came to the rescue and took his children back to High Camp, the flight there was in complete silence. Y/N and the others were more than stressed out and prayed to Eywa that everyone would make it back safely. When she spotted the Ikran of `Teyam she notified the others and they ran towards the arriving warriors. They were all very worried.

Jake pulled his two sons along by the scruff of the neck and the others gathered around them. "What were you thinking again, Lo'ak," he hissed at him. "You have put your brother and others in great danger" No one dared speak a word. "How dare you two disobey my orders again?" Neteyam took the blame again and said it was his fault. "Dad, it was my fault, I shouldn't have let Lo'ak fly away like that."

"I really expected something different from you in a situation like this, Neteyam. You really let me down" Jake was even angrier than before and the people around him didn't help to keep his rage in check either. "Kiri, help your grandmother with the injured".

"He's hurt," Kiri tried to explain to her adoptive father. But he ignored her comment. When Tuk heard what Kiri had said, she took the arm from her other brother and looked to see if he was also carrying any visible injuries. Jake just shook his head and Kiri stood her ground staying by Nete‘s site. "What the hell has gotten into you guys lately" Blinded again Jake didn't notice that his oldest was really hurt. Now Neytiri tried to intervene as well. "Jake your son is hurt" She tried to calm her mate down. When Y/N heard what Neytiri said, she jumped to Neteyam's side like Tuk before and checked him for wounds too, even if they were only small scratches. "Go patch him up," Jake gave up when he realized it was no use continuing to give his sons a lecture. The scurry of the Sully family dispersed and Kiri and Y/N helped Neteyam to Mo'at's tent. Lo'ak was still standing in the same spot. He had really hoped that his father would see his potential in him for once. But he hadn't expected the fight to turn out like this either. "Get that crap out of your face," his father said at the end before he left, and Lo'ak wiped the war paint off his face with the back of his hand.

"Nete please don't ever do something like that again," Y/N said to him worriedly as she held his arm tightly to guide him. "I had to protect my brother"

"I know you did, but it could have ended so much worse for you. I could have lost you" His heart soared at her words. Her concern for him made him happy and he tried to cheer her up, not liking the sad look on her face. "I am your mighty warrior after all. I'll be fine" All the encounters from the last few days, when they were almost at enmity with each other and hardly spent any time together, seemed to have faded away. Feeling her closeness, her warmth again. He wanted most of all to take her in his arms again and tell her that she doesn't have to worry about him, as long as he could look into her beautiful eyes again at the end. But unfortunately nothing came of it, because Kiri began to supply him with an ointment, which burned strongly on his skin. Y/N contorted her face as she saw Neteyam in pain and then took his hand in hers and brought it to her face to show him that she was with him. No matter what. And he realized again that he would want to spend more time with her.

After the event, Neteyam was instructed not to take his eyes off his brother and so he had to come along again, although he had actually imagined spending the day with Y/N, but she was nowhere to be found. They wanted to explore the forest together today and since Tuk would have been alone again, she simply came along. Lo'ak was less enthusiastic about this and made after her in a high voice that was supposed to resemble Tuk's "If you don't let me come to the battlefield, I'm telling mom" and waved his hands around. Tuk, however, just stuck her tongue out at him and continued to hop around after Kiri. They walked around for some time, occasionally encountering small animals like the fan lizards. Tuk enjoyed disturbing the resting lizards and ran towards them. They got scared and she marveled as these luminous magenta discs floated away to a safe spot.

During the playful venture in the forest they came across a place that Spider recognized as the place where Jake and his father fought. Lo‘ak then decides to explore it, knowing again it was against Jakes rules. Neteyam was not amused by his brothers behavior but as soon as he wanted to tell the others that it wasn’t a good idea to go there, they had already scurried off. Unbeknownst to them, they were not alone. Miles Quaritch, now in his new Na‘Vi body and with his 1st Recom squad in tow were reconnoitering the same spot.

Lo'ak noticed them first and stopped his siblings, gesturing for them to hide in the bushes. He and Neteyam then decided to radio their father about their whereabouts. However, a skirmish ensues and the Recom squad captures the Sully children before they can get a response from their father.

taglist: @sssspencerrr @mashiromochi @welcomebackfelicia @byunpum @cedeni-beanie @fanboyluvr @yourbloodyqueen @eywas-heir @hwang-jully @padfootsvixen @dreamergirljen @jordynmrowe @ozisens @devil-on-acid

#atwow #atwow imagines #atwow x reader #avatar #avatar fanfiction #avatar imagine #avatar the way of water #avatar x reader #jake sully #kiri x platonic!reader #miles socorro x platonic!reader #neteyam #neteyam imagine #neteyam imagines #neteyam x reader #neteyam x y/n #neteyam x you

[aristidetwain]

Jenny and the Gang: An Interview With Joe Macaré & Nelson Evergreen

Today, October 24th, 2023, marks the 21st anniversary of Name’s Not Down, commonly regarded as the first completed Jenny Everywhere comic story. The work of Joe Macaré and Nelson Evergreen, it was formally released into the public domain on Jenny Everywhere Day last year alongside its sequel, Damn Fine Hostile Takeover, at my own instigation.

Having managed to track down both of these highly esteemed creators — long since departed from the Jenny Everywhere community — it was then my duty and my very great pleasure to conduct the first-ever joint Jenny-centric interview of two of the honoured few who shaped the character in her infancy.

Goggles on! Shift to Interviewspace in three… two… one…

How would you introduce yourselves to Jenny Everywhere readers?

Joe: My name is Joe Macaré (he/him), and I was raised in the Midlands (UK) and now live in the Midwest (US). I work in fundraising and communications, currently for a LGBT+ rights advocacy organization.

Nelson: I’m Neil Evans, a Welsh illustrator and comic artist occasionally going by the pseudonym Nelson Evergreen. I moved back to my hometown of Wrexham, North Wales in 2017, after twenty merry years in Brighton on the south coast of England. Illustration work this year includes a version of George Orwell’s 1984 (Oxford University Press), an anthology of weird — and often terrifying — Christmas folklore from around the globe (Cider Mill Press) and a 72 page graphic novel detailing the life of Mamie Phipps Clarke, the psychologist and activist whose research with her husband Kenneth was key to the abolition of racial segregation in US schools (Magination Press).  Between jobs I’m busy with various ongoing personal labours of love, a couple of which are, after years of agonisingly glacial/troubled development, tantalisingly close to shareable. You can find me at neil-evans.net!

How did you originally learn about Jenny, and what led to your creating full comics starring the character? If those are different questions, what did you/do you like about the character — was it the open-source nature of the project? The appeal of Jenny herself as a protagonist? Something else?

J: I was active on the Barbelith message board from 2000-200something; closer to the truth to say that around the time Jenny Everywhere was created I was deeply, deeply enmeshed on that forum and in that community. It was my first internet “home” and so it’s probably accurate to say that I was initially drawn to the character because it was a Barbelith creative project and therefore something I wanted to be a part of.  But also, when Steven “Moriarty” Wintle drew that first sketch, it definitely popped. Jenny, especially with the paragraph description attached, seemed like someone I knew, or someone I would like to know. An idealized avatar in some ways, but a plausible person in others.

N: I found Barbelith not long after I began “boxsetting” The Invisibles (very belatedly, it was close to the end of the comic’s run), and got quite addicted to the forum. It was a good place.  I’d been messing about making music in bands for a few years, neglecting the illustration/comic side of things, and wanted to get back into drawing… and Barbelith happened to have lots of folk who were very good with words. So I posted a few pieces of work and asked if anyone had any comic scripts they wanted drawn, and I’m guessing Moriarty/Steven’s Jenny thread must have appeared at around that time or very shortly after..? Joe and I had certainly already touched on the idea of working together, so when Jenny appeared I think we just took it as read that that was “the one”.  With Jenny, the initial appeal for me was the very unique nature of her potential: the dozens/hundreds/thousands of different ways the character could go, depending on who’s working with her. Also, I’m generally quite content in my own company - god knows, you have to be when you’re illustrating comics - but I loved the online hubbub around her at that time. There was something really… *cosy* about knowing others were working on their own versions of this character. So that was another huge part of the appeal, that sense of community.

Even though the multiversal gimmick is one of the first things people hear about Jenny, neither Name's Not Down nor Damn Fine Hostile Takeover make any direct reference to it. Was this a conscious choice, and if so, what motivated it?

J: For my part it was a conscious choice and it had a lot to do with the kind of comics I was reading at the time and being influenced by. At the time, complicated continuities and parallel universes seemed like slightly embarrassing excesses that characterized Marvel/DC superhero comics. They were prog rock, and were being challenged by a new wave of what Oni Press called “real mainstream” indie comics. Punchy, punky, often black & white, and very self-consciously influenced more by movies, TV, and music than by superhero comics. You could put fantastical elements in there but nothing that demanded a long explanation. Now, not only did the idea of making comics without multiverses become the mainstream, so that they were more like movies and TV, turn out to be onto a losing proposition and *the exact opposite of what happened,* for better or worse, but half the star writers and comics “thinkers” of the time later turned out to be predatory creeps. Whoops! But at the time, this was the cultural scene that shaped what I wanted to write. A comic you wouldn’t be embarrassed to be seen reading at the zine fair or dance party. Of course, goody nerd that I’ve always been, I couldn’t help but include Smallville references, so any attempt to be consciously cool was always somewhat doomed.

Were there any interesting, non-obvious inspirations or references baked into these stories, that you'd like to share? 

J: Oh god, sometimes I think those scripts were nothing *but* references and it’s quite possible I’ve forgotten some of them now. I mean I’d be very embarrassed by all the Smallville references were it not for the fact that I remember that in the UK, the show was aired in the Sunday morning block which made it perfect hangover television.  Clea was named after Clea Duvall. Bradley was named the somewhat obscure 2000 AD character. I think the most obscure influence/reference is having the character Lex, who considers himself a charmer, always introduce himself by saying “Greetings!” That’s a reference to eldest son Joey in the late 1980s BBC comedy series, Bread. That one was probably only noticed by other British people my age who grew up relating greatly to a show about a working class family with an absent father who constantly worried about money. The television I watched as a kid also led to me choosing Apollo Coffee as the name of the Starbucks stand-in, Starbuck and Apollo being a reference to the original Battlestar Galactica (the reboot had not yet come along!). “Damn Fine Hostile Takeover” is obviously extremely far from a serious piece of political polemic, but I do remember consciously wanting to introduce at least a small flavor of agitprop, compared to “Name’s Not Down” which is mostly just a power fantasy about beating up needlessly aggressive doormen to get into a club. The early political “analysis” I had at the time, which didn’t go much beyond big corporate chains being bad and small local independent coffee shops being good, was obviously influenced by stuff like Naomi Klein’s No Logo. And a sort of bastardized pop culture version of that, that had showed up in things like Grant Morrison’s Marvel Boy. Oh, and a misunderstood El-P lyric. Speaking of Morrison, as befits a character created on Barbelith, that approach of “shove in references to everything you’re inspired by, watching, reading, or listening to at the particular moment you’re writing the comic” was very much inspired by Morrison in general and The Invisibles in particular. Although the Morrison comic I was most trying to emulate, at least in “Name’s Not Down” was Kill Your Boyfriend. But also, the whole reason I set those comics in a thinly fictionalized version of Brighton is because at the time, I was living in London and knew a bunch of people in Brighton (again, many of them through Barbelith, or adjacent to people I’d met via that place). They all seemed very impressive and cool to me at the time: people who put on club nights (It Came From The Sea), wrote about music (Careless Talk Costs Lives / Plan B), or on whom I just had a really big crush. I would take the train down to Brighton many weekends and it loomed large in my imagination. Although there’s no evidence of this on Google, I did not invent calling it “Right-On”: that’s another thing I stole or borrowed and can’t remember from whom or where.

How detailed were the scripts/how much freedom was there on the art end of things? Did you start from a synopsis, or a script, or a storyboard? Are there any notable ways in which the finished works differed from the original outline?

N: I can’t refer to them because I lost my copies in a hard drive calamity a couple of years later, but I remember being struck by how full of gusto and enthusiasm Joe’s scripts were. They really got me fired up to draw. The stage directions had the same infectious energy as the dialogue. I get some quite perfunctory scripts in my line of work — and that’s fine — but I do appreciate the ones that go above and beyond.  I think I’m right in recalling the scripts as being very precise..? Joe had a very clear idea of the pacing, and how the story and gags would flow from panel to panel. The dialogue was all there from the start. I remember reading through and immediately getting a clear mental picture of how it was all going to look. It was very tightly scripted but not in a way that felt restrictive, it was very free and easy to illustrate. And it gave me plenty of leeway to come up with hordes of characters/creatures in those big ensemble panels.

J: I no longer have the scripts so I’m going from memory, but: I wrote pretty detailed scripts but I definitely had panels or entire pages where I encouraged Nelson Evergreen to cut loose and add whatever details and weird characters sprang to his mind. This is as good a place as any to state that I got phenomenally lucky when Nelson agreed to collaborate. Of all the artists who were kicking around Barbelith at the time and who were at all interested in the project, he was perhaps the most talented and I certainly can’t imagine anyone else who would have drawn those comics as well, or that they would have been received as warmly had they been drawn by anyone else.

A mysterious bald man makes conspicuous cameos in both of your long-form Jenny comics. What's the significance of this character? Some of us in the Jenny Everywhere Discord suggested he might have been meant to be Grant Morrison themself, owing to the focus of the forum on which Jenny originally appeared; short of that, we have no idea… 

N: I *think* he was my addition, but again, without having the scripts to hand, my memory may be playing tricks on me. I mean, he *looks* like the sort of thing I’d have thrown in! I’ve always enjoyed the sight of one lone person looking utterly severe/unimpressed in the midst of general merriment, and I’m guessing I improvised MBM in one panel, he made me laugh, so I put him in another, and then another. Dave, the keyboard player in my band at the time, had that exact t-shirt, with the “Guides” logo, which he wore all the bloody time, and that must have seemed to me like the perfect outfit. So yeah, just a silly little running visual thing I threw in off the cuff to amuse myself really. Looking back at if from a distance, he *does* look quite significant, doesn’t he? Sorry! I feel like a right troll. 

You've stated in the past that you included the Jenny Nowhere cliffhanger in Damn Fine Hostile Takeover without a conscious plan for what that story might be about — but did you ever have any plans for further Jenny stories that didn't materialise? If so, what were they about? And if you had to write the Nowhere story, what might it be like?

J: The only idea I remember from “The Two Jennys” was that Jenny Nowhere would have made her base of operations the Right-On version of the ruined West Pier (the real world version of which in Brighton is now even more skeletal and not practical for even the most doomer supervillain to use as a hideout). I think it would have culminated in a Quadrophenia-style beach brawl between each Jenny’s followers (Nowhere’s gang all being various black-clad kinds of goths, punks, and techno-nihilists, in contrast to Everywhere’s more brightly colored subcultures). But it’s been long enough now that I can confess that at various points I was working on two or three other ideas for follow-up stories.  One was entitled “Dance-Off 2004” (the year kept changing as it got delayed) and the concept speaks for itself. Then there was “You Say Derby! We Say Die!” which was not a reference to the town in the Midlands but rather to my interest in roller derby which peaked circa 2007-2009 or so (and was named after the band You Say Party). But the last time I was kicking an idea around, it was 2012 and I was already thinking about something with a very different tone that was based around the idea of the Jenny Everywhere “gang” reuniting after going their separate ways. Lex now runs a pub and is married (to Lois from the coffee shop) with two kids. Bradley made a fortune designing extremely blasphemous videogames. Clea is an academic in San Francisco. Everyone quit smoking. Those three aforementioned sequels that never got made would appear as flashback panels, a montage of sorts, unfinished comics repurposed as “lost/secret adventures.” The tone for this was once again stolen from a Grant Morrison comic, namely the “zzzzenith.com” one-off sequel to Zenith. Less a sequel, more a bittersweet look back at an era.

If you've kept up with more recent Jenny projects to one degree or another, what are your thoughts on them? 

N: I haven’t, but they’re on the ‘to do’ list.

If you had limitless time and budget for it, what would be your “dream” Jenny project?

N: Limitless time and budget…? Oooooh. Multiverse versions of the Right-On gang. Sci-fi stuff, cosmic stuff. Stuff that’s wild to draw. The same snappy feel and flow of the originals, but with extra helpings of the rainy melancholy Joe brought in at the close of Damn Fine Hostile Takeover. 

Do you think you'll ever return to the character? How differently would you approach it if you did?

N: Time permitting, absolutely. It was fun. 

J: Well, the gap in time since I last toyed with the idea of a nostalgic sequel comic is now longer than the original time period between the first comics and that one. And those years mean that I both feel more distance from my version of the character, and the supporting cast I gave her, but also more unqualified affection. I joked about embarrassment earlier but it’s actually been long enough now that I’ve passed through and out of the period where I found anything about it embarrassing. What I was writing reflects who I was at the time and also maybe a little of where the zeitgeist was: the violence is cartoony, there’s no consequences to it, and there’s what I would call a Bush-era assumption that going out and partying is in itself halfway to being some kind of act of resistance. For me those comics are a memento from a very specific time in my life, and if I wrote something about that particular Jenny Everywhere now, it would definitely be an older, wiser version. As a sober 45 year-old living in Chicago, Illinois, looking back at something I wrote when I was a heavy-drinking Londoner in his early 20s, it’s even more bittersweet and melancholy.  Jenny and the gang were supposed to be reminiscent of various friends of my own. Over the course of 20 years, you inevitably lose touch with people. You move far away physically (I relocated to a different continent!), you drift apart. And sometimes you fall out with people, and sometimes people die, both of which have happened to me. I would be remiss if I didn’t mention Nila Gupta (rest in power) here, who was a big inspiration for my version of Jenny and for my general idea of a gang of cool anti-corporate people running amok in Right-On.  Losing people who used to be part of your life is individually tragic but it’s also the kind of experience you’re a lot more likely to have by the time you’re 45 than when you’re 23. If this answer sounds like it’s turning into a bummer, it shouldn’t entirely, because the flipside to that is you do develop some perspective, some better priorities, some sense of what you’re supposed to be doing with your life.

N: Oh Nila… ❤️ I had no idea your Jenny was inspired by them. That's beautiful. 

And that's all, folks! They'll be reading this over, so I want to thank Joe and Neil/Nelson again, both for helping to create a character who still means so much to so many of us, niche though she may be… and for taking the time to bring us these insightful, entertaining, and often moving glimpses into the mental world from which Jenny — at least their Jenny — first sprung.

Happy Jenniversary, and thanks for everything!

#Jenny Everywhere #Interview #Nelson Evergreen #Joe Macaré #Comics #Webcomics #Open-Source

[kitausuret]

Hi Kita! 💗

It's been a hot minute, but if you need an excuse to ramble about fics then I would love to hear about Dust to Dust! Which characters were most fun to write, are there any particular scenes that you look forward to writing, what are your plans for the boys?

Also, what would you most like to see fanart of for DtD or other symbiote stuff?

Have a lovely day!

Hi friend! I'm still thinking about that wonderful symbiot3 piece you drew for me that I look at a normal amount (every week at least). And I definitely relish the opportunity to talk about DTD... which let's see if I can push out another chapter before I hit a full 12 months since the last update, lol.

Honestly my favorite characters to write have been Dr. Steven and of course Andi Benton. Andi is a given, but Dr. Steven was my favourite person to come out of the Costa run. He's just so wonderful. I love his unashamed earnestness, while still being very pragmatic in many ways. I really love him, and I love any excuse to write him into a scene. I'm excited to write him checking in with Flash, Eddie, and the Symbiote intermittently throughout the rest of the story.

Aside from the obvious things that I've set in motion as of last May's update, I have a bunch of little like... B and C plots I want to try and string together. There's a bunch of supporting cast characters from both Venom and Spider-Man comics that I'm excited to bring on board, and a couple that have cameoed in early chapters that I'll bring back. Obviously the last chapter introduced Harry Osborn Lyman to the cast again, which is mostly self-indulgent, but I also want to weave (get it? weave..? i'll stop) Peter into the story a little more as well. Like it or not he IS a huge part of Venom's story - every Venom - and in particular I want to develop how he will have to... hmm... shall we say... come to terms with Flash and Eddie.... you know...... ;)

Like. He will figure it out. Perhaps unfortunately, for Mr. Peter "I am upset when we are not about me" Parker. But he'll also get over it, because the alternative is losing Flash forever.

As far as fanart? HMMMM I mean I guess really any scene where Eddie and Flash kind of get up in each others' faces, it's a very funny mental image for me. Couple of tough guys. It's about the homoeroticism. Or actually just anything with Andi. No more Eddie/Flash this story is now all about Miss Andrea Benton. They don't matter it's all about Mania babyyyyyyy!!!!

Okay it is very late so I will call this good but thank you!!!!!! for indulging me and letting me go off about all this. My readers are the best~ <3 <3 <3 <3

#not gonna lie this is the best I've felt about picking DTD back up in like. literally months. #you have no idea how bad it's been for me lol #so thank you sincerely for this ask #it's been really tough but this made me feel inspired again #thank you thank you my friend (happy tears emoji) #asked and answered #dust to dust

[andreafmn]

Heartbeat - Chapter 3

Word Count: 3.7K

Story Description: (Y/N) Marks had no free time. From studying for med school, working her rounds for clinical, and the occasional babysitting her sisters sprung on her, she was all booked up. But none of that stopped her from aiding her sister and their best friends to rob a grocery store. She could have never guessed those couple of minutes would be enough to change her life forever or that it would lead to her meeting the man that would catalyze that shift.

Mood Board/Character Face Claim

Chapter: 3/?

Warnings: graphic mentions medical procedures and possible death, mentions of blood and violence

A/N: Had to repost chapter three for some reason. But, here it is. Give some love to this story, please 😬 I love it too much

If you enjoy my writing, I’ll also be posting them with original character inserts in AO3 and Wattpad along with other stories. You can request at any time any story or one-shot you desire. Hope you enjoy, and all constructive criticism is encouraged.

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Let me know if you’d like to be tagged or if you have any requests! My inbox and comments are open. Remember that to be tagged you must allow tagging on your settings.

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Chapter 3

“Before getting to what you need to do,” he licked his lips. “I’m gonna need to make sure you don’t got anything on you that can be used against me.”

“I have a bag full of medical equipment that could harm you,” she retorted. “Need I remind you I am here as a doctor. And if you contacted me, it’s because there is someone that needs medical attention.”

(Y/N) knew she was pushing her luck, but she had the upper hand at that moment. And she was going to play it.

“Don’t tell me you’re scared of a little body check, (Y/N),” the man chuckled. “Or is there something you’re hiding from me, sweetheart?”

“I’ve got nothing to hide.”

“Then you won’t oppose to a little body search.”

“Fine.”

The girl set down her bag on the floor, spreading her arms and legs into a star pose. He neared her slowly, his eyes perusing her body like she was the last drop of water in the desert. The man stalked his prey, taking his time to drink in her image before placing his hands on her.

He started by the arms, making the hairs on her body stand upright, directing chills all over her veins. His hands were rough, a little calloused. He drove up her arms, kneading her skin softly through the long-sleeve T-shirt she had on. He landed on her shoulders before falling to the sides of her breasts, earning a strangled breath from (Y/N).

She had been holding her breath since she first felt his touch, but the closeness of his hands to such a sensitive area drew out an unconscious sound from within. (Y/N) felt his breath on her neck as he chuckled at her reaction. He was so close she wasn’t sure where his body stopped and hers began.

The man continued the search, sleuthing for something he knew was not there. The most dangerous weapon the girl had on her body was her smile – one glance of it and she could have whatever she wanted, not that he’d tell her.

They both knew he was toying with her, coming up with a baseless excuse to feel up her body. But neither minded much. If there was a speck of honesty between the pair, they would confess that they’d rather forget there was a person in need of medical help and engage in a more… physical activity.

A minute later, the man was standing in front of her. “I need to check the front too,” he said.

She nodded her head slowly and gulped loudly. His eyes never left hers, that cocky grin plastered on his face.

He repeated the same steps he’d done from behind. He started at her arms, slowing down on (Y/N)’s most sensitive spots – her chest, her hips, between her thighs. The only thing keeping her up was the knowledge that once he was done, she had to treat a patient.

“Well, Ms. Marks,” he cleared his throat. “It seems you were telling the truth.”

“You may be surprised, but I often do,” she retorted. “Now, can we go see if my patient is still alive?” 

“I’m sure everything’s fine,” the man chuckled. “Someone would have already told me if they were dead.”

“I’m sorry, they?”

He motioned for her to follow him, and she scrambled to grab her bag. He led her down two corridors, ending up in front of a room with a closed door.

Behind, there was a scene (Y/N) wasn’t quite prepared for.

Five men, all with different emergencies, were loudly arguing about who was at fault for their injuries. The man with a knife in his leg was being yelled at by a man with a dislocated shoulder; the man with a deep laceration on his arm and chest was yelling at the man with a wound on his shoulder; another man with a wounded shoulder was yelling at all of them. The mix of Spanish and English had (Y/N)’s head spinning, unsure of where to start.

“Excuse me,” she managed to peep out. “Excuse me!”

“YO!” the man yelled out, earning complete silence from the room and their full attention. “The lady is speaking. Go ahead, sweetheart.”

“Thank you,” she sighed. “I need to know what wounds I’m treating, and I’m gonna need a clean room to perform whatever procedures I need to.”

“Alright, you heard the lady,” he commanded. “Blaze, Philly, make sure the room next door is completely clean. Don’t want these fools getting an infection. Anything else, ma?”

“I’ll let you know if I need anything else,” she smiled before turning to the man she recognized from his visit to Beth’s house. She took out a notebook to create a makeshift patient intake form. “Alright, I need to know which wound I need to treat first. So, what am I dealing with here?”

“These two, GSW to the shoulder. The bullet went right through, no major arteries hit,” he started. “That one obviously has a knife sticking out of his leg. My guess is nothing major was hit, there wasn’t much of a bleed. The other one has deep lacerations on his arm, chest, and back – I think closing him up with a suture is fine. We were able to get everyone’s bleeding under control. And, obviously, there’s the dislocated shoulder.”

“You seem to know your stuff. Any medical training?”

“Nah, I just watch a lot of medical shows,” he shrugged.

(Y/N) made her way to the man with the knife stuck to his leg, the only one whose condition they weren’t certain of.  “What’s your name, sir?”

“Do I look like a sir?” he spat aggressively.

“Sir, I’m gonna need you to calm down,” (Y/N) asserted herself. “Or I can deal with everyone else and leave you to possibly bleed out right here. It’s your choice.”

“It’s Francis,” he grumbled. “My name is Francis Kirk.”

“Alright, Francis. I’m student doctor Marks,” she smiled forcefully. “Since you were wounded to right now, has there been any massive bleeding in the area?”

“No,” he groaned.

“Okay, that’s a good sign.” (Y/N) then called out to the room. “Do any of you know how big the blade on this knife is?”

“It’s four and a half inches,” the man with the dislocated shoulder answered. “Can I get it back when it’s out of this fool?”

“Okay, that’s deep enough that it may have nicked an artery,” she spoke to herself. “Twitch, I’m gonna need to check on his leg here. Move everyone else to the sterile room. I’m gonna need your help here in case the knife did pierce through an artery. I’m certain you guys want to keep this out of the hospital. So, I need your boss to know that if it did get that deep, and I’m not able to cauterize that vein in time, he could die.”

“I’ll let him know,” Twitch scrambled. “Okay, guys, let’s go to the next room.”

As everyone left what (Y/N) could only make out as a storage room for… Christmas wrapping paper, Francis started fidgeting. She could tell he was worried about the reason behind everyone’s departure. But what worried her was that he was beginning to show signs of going into shock – clammy and pale skin, rapid breathing, and his eyes were looking frantically around as if he was dizzy.

“Francis, I’m gonna need you to keep very still, okay?” (Y/N) instructed as she pulled out sterile gloves from her bag before checking the man’s pulse. “The knife is deep enough that it could have nicked an artery and I need to act quickly if it did.”

“Oh my god, I’m gonna die,” he breathed out. “I’m gonna die, aren’t I, Dr. Marks?”

“Not if I can help it,” (Y/N) tried to ease. “I’m gonna need you to lay down, okay? And remember, try not to move too much.”

“The room’s spinning, doc,” Francis panicked as she helped him lay down. “I can’t… I can’t breathe.”

“HEY! I need someone in here!” (Y/N) called out to anyone. Francis was losing consciousness and there was a possibility he could stop breathing. She needed to ensure that the knife didn’t move even a millimeter more. “Francis, I’m gonna need you to stay with me now. Keep those eyes open.”

“I can’t, doc,” he slurred. “They’re so hea…”

As Francis started to flutter his eyes closed, his boss burst through the doors, Twitch following behind.

“What’s going on?” he worried. “Francis was fine.”

“He’s gone into shock,” (Y/N) explained. “I’m gonna need you to hold his leg very still while I check his pulse.”

The man knelt and held onto Francis’s leg, his eyes following the girl’s every move. She placed two fingers on the injured man’s neck, checking his pulse.

“Fuck!”

“What’s wrong?”

“He has a weak pulse,” she answered as she placed a finger under his nose. She quickly sprung to action and started hands-on CPR. “His breathing is too staggered.”

“What can I do?” Twitch asked.

“Do you know CPR?” He nodded. “I’m gonna need you to continue compressions on his chest while I take care of the stab wound. You,” she pointed at the boss. “Sanitize your hands and put on some gloves, I’m gonna need your help if this starts to bleed hard.”

She took scissors out of her bag, cutting the man’s pant leg carefully around the wound as the man in front of her slipped on a pair of gloves. The fabric was already soaked in blood as she discarded it to the side, a slopping sound following it hitting the ground.

“In the bag, you’re gonna find something labeled clot gauze,” she directed. “If when I pull the knife out there is a massive bleed, I’m going to need you to press the gauze into the wound as I prep my materials to stop the bleed. You’ve gotta be quick. Can you do it?”

“Yes,” he affirmed. The man rummaged through the bag and pulled out the gauze. “I’m ready.”

“Okay,” she breathed. “I’m gonna pull the knife out now.”

(Y/N) wrapped her hand around the handle, tugging softly upward. She breathed out and prepared herself for the worse. And speak of the devil and he shall appear. As soon as the blade was completely unsheathed the wound spurted blood, splashing her sweater and face with blood.

“Go,” she commanded. “Put it in, now.”

“How much do I put in?”

“As much until we can stop the bleeding.” (Y/N) let him stuff the wound, rummaging through her bag for some iodine, a scalpel, a stretch band, and a suture kit. “Twitch, can you check his pulse?”

“I-I don’t know how.”

“Just count it out until I tell you to stop.” As he started, she looked down at her watch. She only needed fifteen seconds. “Alright, stop. His pulse is getting a bit low – it’s at 58. Keep those compressions going, Twitch. Don’t stop.”

“Wh-what’re you doing?” the boss asked as (Y/N) wrapped the stretch band carefully around the leg. He was clearly getting worried about Francis.

“I’m applying a tourniquet to his leg to stop the flow of blood to it. That way I can find whatever is causing the bleed and close it up,” she explained. Her hands worked gently, but swiftly. He wasn’t sure how, but she was making everything look so easy. “This will also alleviate some of the pressure on his heart. Once I stop the flow it won’t need to try so hard to pump more into the leg.”

“Look, the bleeding has stopped,” he mused.

“Perfect,” she breathed. She drenched the area with the iodine solution and the scalpel, making sure it was as clean as possible. “Once I open this up more, I’m gonna need you to hold the wound open until I find the nicked vein.”

“Yeah, alright.”

(Y/N) could feel the adrenaline coursing through her veins. She had done many of these procedures whilst working in the emergency department, but she had always been accompanied by someone that knew more than her. In this situation, she was the professional and all the pressure fell on her.

She took steadying breaths before pressing the tip of the scalpel onto the skin after removing the clot gauze. She needed to move quickly, and there was no room for mistakes.

“Okay, take your index and middle finger and spread the area open, enough to let my hand fit through.” After he did as told, (Y/N) slid her hand in and felt around for the wounded vein. “I’ve got it. I’m gonna need you to open this up a bit more while I sew this vein shut.”

She packed some more gauze around the nicked vein, clearing her way for the sutures. (Y/N) opened the new kit and set to work on closing the nick. Suturing had become second nature after all the practice and all the patients she’d had to close up at the hospital. Making sure to do the right sutures was the hard part. But with the forceps, she closed the small incision the knife had left on the vein. As she looked at her work, she took in a breath she didn’t know she needed. The hardest part was over.

“Check his pulse again, Twitch.” Fifteen more seconds. “Alright, heart rate’s going up, but keep compressions going. You can take your fingers out. I’m gonna close the incision now.”

Superficial sutures were easy enough, she had done a couple just mere hours before. It only took a minute before she was relieving the stretch band and starting to dress the wound.

“Wow,” the boss breathed. “Is he gonna be okay?”

“Stop compressions,” (Y/N) instructed. She removed her bloodied gloves and checked Francis’s wrist for his pulse. “His heart is beating steady. It seems he’s gonna be okay for now. Let’s transport him to the clean room so I can start an IV line. I’ll start treating the others after. Now, on three, Twitch, you’re gonna grab him by his armpits. You’ll grab that leg, and I’ll take this one.”

On her count, the trio lifted the man and carried him to the room where the rest of the injured were quiet for the first time. All conversation ceased when they saw their friend unconscious.

“Place him on this table, carefully,” she mandated. “And get me something to perch the IV bag on.”

“Does that lamp work?” Twitch asked.

“Yeah.”

After finding a vein, (Y/N) started an IV drip with 10 milligrams of morphine. The man would be in enough pain as he recovered. She then clipped the bag to the highest part of the lamp and allowed the drip to do its work.

As Francis recuperated, (Y/N) set to work on her other patients. Marcos and Willie were her GSW patients, followed by Danny the laceration victim, and finally Ethan with the dislocated shoulder and the loudest mouth. Not once had he stopped complaining about his pain. She was suturing men with a simple lidocaine shot and he was crying over a popped shoulder.

“You know if it was so easy, you could have put my shoulder into place first,” he mumbled.

“I treat people depending on the emergency level,” she gritted her teeth. “Your popped shoulder is at the bottom of the list.”

“You could’ve at least given me something for the pain,” Ethan argued.

“The man you stabbed almost died an hour ago,” she exasperated. “My face, my clothes are drenched in his blood. Instead of complaining of a little pain, be thankful you didn’t lose someone from your side.”

At her outburst, the man finally quieted down, his head falling in shame.

“I can give you some Ibuprofen for the pain right now,” she sighed. “If the pain continues, continue taking it every six to eight hours and you’ll be fine.”

“Alright,” he answered sheepishly. “Thanks, doc.”

“Sure.”

(Y/N) needed a breath. She could feel the walls around her closing in on her and the eyes of everyone on her. She just needed a second.

She pushed through the door and closed it behind her. In the empty hallway, she allowed her back to hit the wall and she breathed. She closed her eyes and breathed.

“You did great in there,” his voice brought her back. “I would’ve thought you were already a doctor.”

“We could’ve lost Francis back there,” she sighed staggerdly.  “And I wouldn’t have been able to do anything.”

“You should go home,” he blurted.

“No, I’ve gotta wait until Francis wakes up to make sure nothing happens,” (Y/N) retorted. “After he wakes up, I’ll go.”

“(Y/N)…”

“Look, I need to make sure he’s okay!” She felt a tear fall from her eye. “Look, um, if I’m gonna continue treating your workers like this I’m gonna need you to get some medical equipment and medications. I took these things yesterday from the hospital, just in case. Once or twice I can probably get away with it, but if it becomes recurring…”

“You could get in trouble,” he finished. “Get me a list of what you would need in stock, I’ll make sure we have it for you.”

“Yo, he’s waking up,” Twitch interrupted.

(Y/N) followed behind the man, beads of sweat forming on her forehead. All she could hope for was that she didn’t damage his leg further than the initial wound.

“W-what happened?” Francis choked out before trying to sit up.

“Woah, Mr. Kirk,” (Y/N) stopped him. “I’m gonna need you to stay lying down for a sec.”

“Why am I hooked up to an IV? And why are you red, doc?”

“Well, Mr. Kirk, you went into shock,” she started. “When I removed the knife it revealed that your femoral artery had been nicked — there comes in this lovely hue you’ve painted me. But luckily we were able to get the bleeding under control and the vein stitched up. Now, I’m gonna need you to do something for me, Francis.”

“Anything, doc.”

“I’m gonna need you to push on my hand with your foot as hard as you can.” And he did. (Y/N) could feel a weight leave her shoulders — she didn’t paralyze him. “Good, that’s very good, Francis. Now, I’m gonna leave you some detailed instructions on how to care for your wound, alright?”

“Yes, thank you, Doctor Marks.”

“Sure thing,” she smiled. “No more stupid fights, alright?”

“Promise, doc,” rang out through the room from the ashamed men.

“Okay, you guys,” (Y/N) chuckled. “Take it easy now.”

She picked up the instruments she couldn’t sanitize and put them in a biohazard bag – probably would need to sneak it in with the hospital’s trash. Her rush was finally coming down and she could feel her hands starting to shake. It was no secret where she worked that she was always quick to action, a great diagnostician, and a proficient treatment doctor – most of the doctors she worked with told her that she had a gift. But there was a danger to doing all of this by herself. (Y/N) knew a lot, especially about the theoretical side of medicine, but what scared her was everything she didn’t know in practice.

“Go clean up your face,” the man interrupted. “I’ll pack your stuff up, ma. Twitch will take you to the bathroom.”

“Uh, sure,” she stammered.

She let go of the vials in her hands and turned to follow Twitch out of the room. Her breathing was staggered, and she felt her limbs going numb, tingling running through them. The crash after an adrenaline rush.

“You okay, doc?” Twitch asked before she nodded. “What you did in there was incredible, man. You could skip med school and just come work with us here.”

“As tempting as that sounds, I do need to at least finish up the last year and a half of med school,” she chuckled dryly. “But who knows? Maybe I’ll skip my residency and come straight to you guys.”

“Sounds good,” he laughed. “Bathroom’s through there.”

With a smile she disappeared through the doors, allowing herself to let out a strangled sob.

Looking at her reflection in the mirror, she wasn’t sure who was looking back. The image was straight out of a horror movie. Her face was splattered with dried blood, her auburn hair streaked as well. The grey t-shirt she had on was darkened by the crimson liquid. At the hospital, she was able to remove any sign of being involved in surgery before she looked at herself again. But these were her clothes, the way she had to walk into Beth’s house inconspicuously.

She ran the water, washing her hand furiously before rubbing her face. (Y/N) stared at the water running red down the sink, all evidence of the treatment disappearing with the stream. She gripped the edge of the counter, listening to the water droplets dripping onto it, focusing on her breathing. But a knock startled her.

“Yeah?” she called out.

“I got you some clothes, so you don’t have to go home looking like that,” the man offered. “And, uh, thank you for helping Francis out. We didn’t know it was that bad.”

“Thanks,” she responded. “And that’s what I’m here for. Please tell me this takes care of what I owe you.”

“Yeah, we square.”

“Great,” (Y/N) breathed out.

“But I’m guessing you’re not done here,” he chuckled. “You gonna come back? Start making some real money?”

“I was serious when I said you’d need to get some supplies. They cost a shit ton of money, but it’s better than having your people die,” she started. “Francis could have died today, bleeding out over a pissing war between your subordinates. And I understand why you would rather let him die than take him to a hospital, but I’ve seen far too many people pass because of gang violence. If you can’t control your own people, it’s not worth it.”

“A’ight,” he surprisingly affirmed. “Just get me that list.”

“I’m gonna have to text it to you,” she teased. “But I’m not allowed to contact you first.”

“I can make an exception,” he grinned. “Get home, (Y/N). You did some good work today.”

“Wait,” (Y/N) stopped the man. “I need a name, your name. I can’t keep calling you boss or that man in my head.”

“Rio,” he grinned. “You can call me Rio.”

#rio imagine #rio good girls #good girls imagine #rio good girls imagine #rio smut #beth boland #annie marks #ruby hill #nbc good girls #dean boland #stan hill #fanfiction #fan fiction #andreafmn #writing #angst #enemies to lovers #secual tension #heartbeat #eventual smut #eventual relationship #eventual romance #fluff #hurt #no comfort #comfort #rio x reader #reader insert #female reader #manny montana

[patriciavetinari]

Tagged by @patchworkgargoyle to asnwer 15 questions!!

1. Are you named after anyone?

In the real world my name is in like top 10 most common ones in my first language which I hate vehemently for that fact alone. Also, maybe I was named after some relatives with that name but that was never an important part of my lore. I dislike the name anyway.

My tumblrsona is Patricia Vetinari, obviously named after the one and only dark flamingo authoritarian usurper, patrician Vetinari. Lady Margolotta was taken at the time I think but I figure it's for the best.

2. When was the last time you cried?

Day before yesterday. There's this OC who makes Ophelia from Hamlet read like a buddy comedy by contrast and that's in no way shaded by the fact that I'm the one writing the tragedy, I'm completely objective.

3. Do you have kids?

I do not and I don't think I'm fit to be a parent. I think about it sometimes though. I think of names and the names for their potential imaginary friends. And what would our favorite board game be and could I possibly sit down and invent it? Who knows.

4. What sports do you play/ have played?

Used to swim. Loved swimming in family time pools and wild waters like lakes. Had a nickname 'Bobber' as a child. Was strongly suggested (read: forced) into more sportish swimming by mother to lose weight. Was bullied out of the swimming club because of my weight. So you could say it all went

Swimmingly.

5. Do you use sarcasm?

Only recreationally.

6. What's the first thing you notice about people?

Clothes. I can't be seriously into fashion, I'm fat and a commie, but I like people watching and seeing the life choices they wear on the outside, of the circumstances they are forced to wear. Either way, most make me sad.

7. What's your eye colour?

Blue. I fee ehh about it. Wanted brown as a teen, would prefer green now. But I can't be bothered with lenses and occasional compliments are nice.

8. Scary movies or happy endings?

Scary movie can have a happy ending if you're not a coward about it. Happy for whom? Which character are we suggested to identify it? What is a happy ending anyway? Can a happy ending be a scary movie? Absolutely.

That being said, I don't do horror well, and I do like when the characters I like get home, get fed, get railed, get fulfilled. If they had to go through a scary movie for that – that's the story, innit?

9. Any talents?

I am a jack of all trades kinda gal. Is loneliness a talent? I'm a maestro at that.

Also I cook well I guess. Some writing is looking good.

I might also be an absolute firecracker in bed but I'd have to get back to you on that after I acquire some empirical evidence, but my theory is strong.

10. Where were you born?

In a hospital in the midst of New Years celebrations in a country that was struggling to be born with me.

11. What are your hobbies?

I have ADHD. Give me a well presented topic and it will become my hobby for a few weeks.

I write silly things about silly people.

I read serious things about silly people.

I run my sims dynasty with an iron fist and a five year plan.

I read about perfumes sometimes. I even wear some and one of these days one of those dainty bottles will get me laid.

I try to learn to play chess. Consistency is key and my inner locksmith hanged himself when I was 13, I still hold memorials for the man and pay a generous pension to his unfortunate widow.

I recently drew a picture of a snake with a muffin.

I sometimes make collages and playlists for my unfortunate OCs.

I currently have 2 moods in music: Eartha Kitt or Vivaldi. No in-between. It's been going on for a month.

I do my best not to have a day without an orgasm (covid has put a slight damper on that but I'm not a quitter).

I duolingo, French. 707 day streak. I will be guillotined for this.

I steal cashew nuts from the office to feed to local birds.

I like vintage kitchens, I make the best hot chocolate, I talk to myself, I plan to turn my life around every other weekend, I go to that drama thing when I don't have a deadly virus ripping through me, I will pet any dog that will have me and any cat that's not fast enough. I've recently broke 400k point record on tetris. I post about all that and more (or less) on my silly little scripture of a blog. I sing badly outside of the shower when nobody's home. In the shower I check if I still can do the wrist lock behind back thing (I can, both sides). I ache for the world and my place in it.

I forgot what the question was, moving on.

12. Do you have any pets?

Beautiful twin monsters, little Deppy (short for Depression) and sweet mild Annie (short for Anxiety). Also a plushie called Fucked Up Evil Little Pudding, he's a sweetheart. My puter is called Bartholomew and we're civil with each other.

This is a very long version of 'I rent. I'm not allowed companionship and warmth of a live being by my side'.

13. How tall are you?

Statuesque 5'2'' in the weird foot measurements. 160 in normal ones.

14. Favourite subject in school?

Chemistry. I was spectacularly bad at it. But I actually tried, the teacher was a few percent less shit than others and sometimes I actually got the material and had wild fantasies of giving old Mendeleev a run for his money. Those dreams were crushed firmly by 11th grade.

15. Dream job?

Sheep farming. Also writing children's books in spare time.

I don't think I know 15 people on here well enough to tag, my affliction is also making me cough my heart out, so please do this if you feel like it and check in on me in a day or so if I had died or not. If you'll have a moment that is.

#15 questions #tagged in

[chocodaffodil]

I don't know what I'm doing. I just slapped on colors and hoped it looked good

Now I will start rambling!

So there was this person in the Omori discord server who drew fine in the Omori art style and my friend, a fellow Omori fan, sent it to me and I was super inspired. It just looked super pretty and my crops were watered and absolutely flourished!! My friend also helped me figure out who would be in Mari's role, with the options being past fine members and of course, Tsumugi had to die <3

I like him very much (and he is one of my favorite Enstars characters... just #5 though) so I wanna give him that really important role ahah

It only makes sense because he's the one who was the most affected by Eichi?? He really considered Eichi a friend and felt betrayed by his actions while Nagisa and Hiyori were just in fine on contract. I honestly do not know much about the Enstars story and it's been a while since I've finished Omori so idk...

But yeah, it has to be Tsumugi!

Anyways, Eichi wouldn't be a shut-in and only stay at home like Sunny. I see him in a coma after the events of the War and Tsumugi's death? And that's why he's in a dream world, where Tsumugi is still alive and things are starting to settle down.

The white egret orchid in the pic is basically a redraw of the one in Omori. The game says that it symbolizes the phrase "my thoughts will follow you into your dreams."

I associate it with Basil and I think he means well when he shows up in Sunny's dreams as Stranger.

As for Natsume... I'm giving him Stranger's role and he definitely does not have good intentions for Eichi so that line, "my thoughts will follow you into your dreams" would be more of a curse. He'd be constantly showing up in Eichi's dream world and trying to force him to remember what he's done.

The inciting event that forces Omori to explore the dream world with his friends (and him eventually remembering Mari's death) was looking for Basil, who is missing.

For Eichi, the inciting event would be Natsume stirring up a rebellion.

I don't think there'd be silly little creatures to fight like sprout moles and bunnies. The battles would be singing and dancing as per Yumenosaki style. Rebels would continuously spring up and challenge fine to a duel.

But of course, there'd be little side quests like Omori where fine, with 3 out of 4 members being part of the student council, have to do some work. I'm being vague because I have no clue. I can see quests being asked by students and they're like pinned to a bulletin board. Is Yuzuru even a part of the student council or was he just there to help Tori out?

Other notes!

There is no Trickstar :)

As in their unit hasn't really officially formed yet. I just don't really see where they would fit?

Eichi is not just impacted by Tsumugi's death. Tsumugi is the face of his guilt and also stands for all the other lives that were lost in the War. A really fitting line I remember is Eichi's 4-star card for the Tempest event in which he says, "I'm destroying someone's dream." I had to check in-game so I guess the lines are actually: "I'm the one who crushes that dream. I, and my dream, could ruin the dreams of others." In order to make his wish of creating a utopia for idols into a reality, Eichi has crushed other people's dreams.

I can see him telling himself that they were necessary sacrifices but perhaps there's another small part of him (or it could be Natsume's thoughts entering his head) that asks if Tsumugi's death and the other deaths were actually necessary. Could there have been some world where all that pain could have been avoided?

Yeah that's the end of my rambling~

I'll talk about the rest of fine and their roles later

I have college stuff to do urghh

Ahh I almost forgot that this would be past Tsumugi, who had no blue/turquoise(??) streaks in his hair.

Also I wanted Natsume to be on the right side of the canvas but the way I drew him, it only makes sense if he's on the left. His longer hair lock is on the left side of his face (if it was our pov, it'd be the right? I feel like I'm making this more confusing) and I want to keep it that way but if he was on the right side of the canvas, that longer lock would be on the wrong side...

Also fun fact, my friend shared that fine Omori art with me 178 days ago so about half a year ago... this has been in the back of my mind for some time but I'm glad I finally drew something and wrote my thoughts out.

The majority of my funky ideas are actually Twst-related even though I have yet to talk about any Twst characters or draw fanart of them...

#enstars #ensemble stars #fanart #art #artwork #enstars x omori #idk is that the right tag #eichi tenshouin #ensemble stars eichi #natsume sakasaki #tsumugi aoba #I have so many funky ideas but I gotta make the time ahh #chocodaffodil art

[tacticalvalor]

" The first thing I can remember about myself is what I think is the night the CIA found me. I was with... Some smugglers. Friends of Perseus. We were on the tarmac, about to board the plane. I had a file from Perseus. We parked, and then... The smuggler turned on me. Shot me. Guessed he had killed me. I remember waking up surrounded by flames. Barely conscious as a team of americans grabbed me. I... I can't remember anything before. Anything that's true, anyway. I can still see what they told me. The fighting in Vietnam... But I was never there. That was lies. I can't... I don't... Remember, who I was.

[Intense scribbling marks the page, scratching out vague ideas of who he could have been. None of them seemed right.]

Then there was... The labs. I think. Long hallways... Da, the labs. I was kept in a fairly large room. Tied to a chair. Across from me was... A door? No. A window. I could see adler on the other side when the light came on. Sometimes park, too. They... He had said something, about normal interrogations not working. There were televisions in the room with me, on little carts. Flashing images of Vietnam... Helicopters. Surveillance... No sound. Instead, the clock ticked. But it seemed... Stuck. Always the same time when they came in. They injected me with... Something. Said it was to help me, but it helped them. I don't know how long passed in there. If there was anybody else. It was them... Hudson, once or twice. Checking on progress. If I was.. Ready. For the job. ...

' We've got a job to do ' . That is what he would say to me over and over, once I trusted him. It... It was an activation, or something. Reassurance of our partnership... Reinforcement. Eventually, I was allowed to accompany him in the labs. Walk the halls... I remember... Empty rooms. Like mine. Strapped chairs and rolling televisions. Clocks on the wall... All the same time. Stuck.

Then... Then there was... The safehouse, outside of berlin. Where we began our operation to chase Perseus. Me, Adler, Park... Sims... Mason.. Woods... Lazar. A team. I only recognized Adler and Park. The others were friends of theirs, I guess.

Nice... I don't.. Think... They knew. About me.

I remember the missions. Moving across Europe. Working with everybody. I felt... Like I belonged. In a way. But they—Adler and Park—they still didn't... trust me. If I went into the red room, for photographs, or peeked into the office Adler vanished into, they grew suspicious. Adler mentioned... Supplies. The drug cocktail they used. I... I don't remember when they could have injected me. Not until after one mission. I was... I thought I was going to die, but we were so close to Perseus. I was on a stretcher. Adler tied me down. Said we had one last job to do...

Remembering where Perseus' safehouse was. Telling them that much. That was my final job. Adler had a syringe. Was shouting with the others that there wasn't time to do things traditionally... So he put the needle through my eye. I recalled Vietnam, just as I always had. But... Part of me knew something was wrong. I told the story over and over. Details grew fuzzy... Mixed. I overheard that I was supposedly having seizures. That my heart was pounding like a ticking bomb. I started... Remembering the labs. They crumbled. Adler kept telling me to find the door. The door to the bunker. But things were wrong. I couldn't feel or see anything beyond my memories. What I was reliving. It was like... Like someone was playing a movie. Like I had died.

But I didn't. They didn't.

Even after I gave them the location, after I finished the job... Realized that Perseus needed to be dealt with... Adler met with me on the cliff. We talked. He seemed... Happy. For once. Until he turned and pulled the gun. I drew mine. We both fired... But I guess he got away. Guess I got away, too. "

— Entries from the Diary of Danya "Bell" Kapista

#(aesthetic) #(musings) #(m: bell) #(tw: abuse)

[hello-im-not-a-possum]

A Secret Leak: Storyboards, Scripts, and Spirits.

There were pros and cons to working on 'the Joey Doodles Hobby' at her workplace; nobody suspected that the book and story boards inside the book were anything unusual or extraordinary, she could work in peace in a place that was comfortable and was easy for her to get information on the past workers in Joey Drew Studios. And the people who noticed her side-projects might have pointed out that a few story boards were a little dark for a family show while others didn't make sense, but Audrey was quick to explain away that they were just concepts put on paper, nothing too big or serious.

The cons? It was easy to mix up "Ink Studio" work with "Archgate Studio" work. While the information on Joey Drew Studios workers itself was easy to find, there was still very little surviving information on the people (aside from Joey himself) at Archgate so there wasn't a lot she could use for them. And while many dismissed what Audrey was doing as just a hobby, unfortunately, some people also got interested in said hobby.

"The little devil looks pretty good in that suit," Audrey froze like a deer in headlights when she heard the Art Director's voice behind her. "What special occasion is that for?"

"O-oh nothing!" she closed the sketchbook "I'm just practicing drawing pinstripe clothes and figured he'd look cute in them..."

"Fair enough, he'd look adorable in anything!" the Director chuckled. "But Audrey, there's something I want to talk to you about regarding other things you've drawn that I've been told about... the unsettling things that... bear a striking resemblance to what was found in the storyboards that were uncovered from Joey Drew's home."

"I guess I've found his concepts fascinating to think about." She shrugged. "They might be a lot gorier than what Bendy's known for, but it's not like it comes out of nowhere. Alice's temper can get the better of her, so her going too far isn't out of the realm of possibilities Bendy might be a timid demon who only pulls small pranks in the show, but he's still a demon at the end of the day, he can be capable of a lot more than what meets the eye."

The Director raised an eyebrow.

"I mean, obviously I don't recommend broadcasting this to the public, but taking his final works and expanding on them in private would've been something he liked to see..."

"...And it's in the same vein as Archgate Pictures itself being a labor of love made in his memory?"

"Yes! Exactly!"

"Fascinating, I'll go talk with Mr. Arch about that and see how he feels, who knows, maybe we can use one or two of those ideas in a Halloween special if we tone them down."

"He does love a good Halloween episode." Audrey nodded in agreement.

"And I'll go ask our animator Wilson to see if he can work his magic. He might not be the most talkative or social person, but he has a real knack for subtly uncanny features as well as detailed designs. They might not work the best with that sailor boy character he's trying to push, but maybe he can help with designing a one-off villain."

"Greeaaat..."

Audrey held onto a fake smile while cursing under her breath. She can't believe she forgot about Wilson! She was so caught up trying to handle the balancing acts of work, the Ink Studio, and trying to help Bendy adjust to the real world that the lying, creepy, son of a gun who sent her to the studio in the first place and wanted to murder her to bring his stupid sailor boy to life was just an afterthought!

How does she explain what happened to him without sounding like she completely lost her mind? That he was dead? That he died in the ink world and his body would most likely never be found? Worse yet, what if he didn't die? Or rather, he didn't stay dead..?

"Mind if I borrow your sketchbook?"

"Yes, I do mind, there's still a lot of stuff that hasn't been finished yet." She hid the book behind her back and took a small step back. "Maybe later."

"I see, well I hope we get to talk about this more often. There's some interesting ideas in there."

"Only time can tell. Now if you excuse me, I really need to... ...go grab some lunch! I was planning on meeting someone for it and I really can't miss it."

"...It's five o'clock."

"Better late than never!" She chuckled while heading for the door. "It's a... very long lunch."

Not caring whether the Art Director believed her or not anymore, she went to clock out. Breathing a sigh of relief when she was alone yet taking a glance behind her just in case she wasn't being followed.

"Audrey...."

She flinched and her blood ran cold when she heard him. Turning back to the machine to check out quicker, she was mentally making a plan on what to do; She was no stranger to ghosts in the studio, but they were pretty much harmless for the most part, only scaring people if they bugged them. But Wilson? Wilson was a different case. Oh the stupid machine! Why won't it work?!

"Auuuudreeeeey...."

He wasn't an unlucky lingering specter who stuck around because he had nowhere else to go, he wanted her soul, that was the last thing he wanted in life. It wasn't too far of a stretch to assume that in the afterlife, he'd want her dead. She didn't know how close he was to her right now, what he was capable of as a member of the undead who had been fused with magic ink, or even what he looked like now... Yes! Finally, the damn thing let her clock out! Now she can leave-

"Auuuuuuuuuudreeeeeeeeeey...."

The voice was right behind her now! She could practically feel his breath on her ears!

She felt an ice-cold, four fingered hand on her shoulder and smacked it off while turning to face what Wilson had become-

-Which was a cartoon version of himself but with a halo over his head, most likely to indicate that he is in fact dead as he is the LAST PERSON who deserved to go to heaven. His missing eye wasn't even ominous, it looked more like somebody forgot to draw it on him. He wasn't even an uncanny mesh of human and toonish features like his Wilson-esc form was.

That was... a *lot* less intimidating than she expected. She would've burst out loud laughing if she didn't know what he was capable of. Her mental image of what he was turned into was that of a mangled corpse with globs of ink instead of guts or blood.

"Okay then." She stated without a hint of fear in her voice. "I'm just gonna go now. I have errands to run, see you on Monday unless others can see you like that."

The cartoon man's expression soured as he watched her go from scared to an unreadable (yet obviously not scared expression) just carrying on like nothing happened.

"...My dear, you do realize that I am going to kill you, right?"

"No, you're going to try to kill me." Audrey corrected while heading to her desk to get her stuff, not caring if Wilson followed her or not. "There's a big difference."

"And what makes you so sure I won't succeed...?"

"Past experience, you don't have your Keepers, the Ink Machine's nowhere in the studio..." she listed off. "And Bendy-"

"Wait! What did you say about the Ink Machine?!"

"According to Nathan, it was taken in by the GENT company for repairs."

"...And did he get a deadline for when he'd get it back?"

"Not to my knowledge."

"That stupid old man..." Wilson shook his head as he cursed under his breath. "Doesn't he know any better?!"

"If he knows what it can do, then he wouldn't want it to break when he doesn't know how to fix it. And if he doesn't know what it can do, then it's still important to him and he wants it maintained." She shrugged as she double checked her bag. "If something you put in a museum broke, where would you send it if you wanted to get it fixed?"

The toon opened his mouth to retort but shut it as he couldn't think of a proper comeback.

"Now if you excuse me, I have a train to catch..." Audrey took her bag and left the office, leaving the toon man to stew in his bitterness.

#bendy and the dark revival #batdr au #a secret leak au #fanfic #audrey drew #wilson arch

[tepperz]

I wanna talk about fanart in the early days of the internet.

 My one friend it up quite nicely,

“Like any amateur art on the internet, Fan art is astronomically ubiquitous online, There have been various methods of uploading fan art and original amateur art on the internet, The earliest yet most popular method of upload fan art is Bulletin Board Systems, Back in the early days of the internet, Artists would upload fan art by the use of a BBS. Most companies didn't mind about any fan art made by amateurs at that time, but some users did get in a bit of trouble for it. Another early and popular method to upload fanart was Usenet, They usually upload it in binaries on newsgroups including original art, Like BBS, Companies didn't mind about fan art being uploaded on Usenet, Yet another method upload art and also the most popular method is email, Users usually send fanart and original art to other users as a hobby rather than professional reasons and financial gains, They also do it as a gift, art trade or a commission, other methods such as FTP is used to archive art along with ISPs, Mini servers, Local server locations and IRC.”

I would like to expand on that. 

Back in the early days of the internet, and I'm talking, like... before 2000, the common things were forum threads, as was mentioned. However, at the time, rather then fanart, the thing that was actually most popular were role plays for me? Fanart has never been new, but it wasn't really seen as a "thing" like it is now. People didn't really make a lot of art of media they enjoyed. Like, there definitely was some, but you have to remember that the quality was really different back then. People didn't have access to digital art tools unless they were professionals. That started changing around 2000-2005 or so, but even then they were the minority. Most people had to draw with their mouses or trackpads if they wanted anything digital done, unless they came from a rich family. People who did fanart mostly did, like, really silly humor pieces rather then illustrations. Memes and really derivative stuff. And the popular people who could draw digital anime art and speak English could be counted in the double digits and were almost exclusively on deviantart. I think I got my first wacom tablet in 2008, for about $200 from a bestbuy. That was kinda the only way to get it back then. So back to role plays, what im getting at is that people didn't really make a lot of fanart so what they did is they wrote stories with their friends. What people did is say "naruto rp" and then, like, take anime characters they found off google and claim it as their oc. Everyone did that. No one drew their oc because everyone was mostly kids and no one really knew how to draw anime art at the time. Fanfiction was even bigger then it is now. There also wasnt smart phones back then and old phones didn't really upload pictures to the internet, and when they did it was bad quality. you basically had to own a scanner to upload anything or get lucky with a phone that actually kinda worked for that (most didn't). What that means is a lot of awkward traditional art thats hard to see and, frankly, not super well drawn most of the time. I guess what I'm trying to say is that derivative works were always around but as far as "fanart" it wasn't the thing that it is today by any means.

it's kinda weird to talk about but i guess a lot of people nowadays don't even know this stuff. anyways, I used to roleplay on neopets which was literally the THING for anyone growing up at the time. That was most people's integration into roleplaying, actually, since it was mainstream. Afterwards, I migrated to a forum site called playanime.com and it looked like this

At the time I thought the site would last forever because there was no context for things on the internet disappearing at the time. But it turned out that it was a public server hosted by this one couple who liked anime and they couldn't keep up with the cost of the growing site so it had to be shut down after a few years. All of the roleplays and friends I made vanished after a while without being fully documented afterwards and I'm sure I'm not the only one. It was a wild west of websites where no archiving was properly done and most servers were hosted by ordinary people with passions just like that. Here's an example of the type of "fanart" that was being shared back then. Circa 2005, it's a picture of a blorbo from a show being shipped with one of my friends self insert oc, which I drew and shared privately to make them happy. Back then, all I had was original Windows Paint and a scanner. This is a pretty good example of the standard quality back then and what "fanart" looked like.

#old internet #internet archive #millennials #gen z #fandom #fanart #long post #text post #my art #behind the scenes #i just think its an interesting conversation #and might help some kids learn about different experiences #idk #archive #archiving #call me Johnathan smith cause im archiving

[waywardstation]

These were all sent like one right after another yesterday and I doubt all of them were sent by one person but here we go Papa Ingo AU lightning round haha

In regards to this post

I admit I was a little confused with the question at the time (I understand it better now but forgive me I have been feeling a little under the weather lately ^^;) and thought it was saying Guzma would take the opportunity to take his own group away from Ingo.

And I don’t really know Guzma’s character at all apart from what’s been discussed on this blog already. He does run a group of thugs, but from what I’ve gathered SM painted him as someone on the wrong side of things, but only because the only person who gave him a chance (leading him to be loyal to them) was using him, and throughout the story he reformed. (But now I’m second guessing myself on that too. I just don’t know this character well ^^;)

So I feel like he would be mindful of Ingo to some degree, because Ingo took care of him and he seems to be driven by that with Lusamine. But apart from my first post, it does seem more in line that he would go with Giovanni even if Ingo doesn’t approve of stealing from Jubilife. His loyalty to Ingo would have him want to help him, even if it means going against his wishes

in regards to kids being thrown back to their own time, out of Hisui at the worst moments

OH that would be so bad!! Can you imagine? Finally, the kids worked so hard but they finally (stole) got the medicine they needed for Ingo. On the way back, they’re all cheering and rushing back with the medicine.

And then the kid holding the medicine just disappears? With the medicine???

If the whole group just is thrown back to their original time, no one would even know what happened

As soon as they get kicked out, most of the kids are alright with stealing from them.

I imagine with a group as big as theres, not everyone is going to be 100% on the same page, but they’re kids and they’ve been unfairly treated. A good portion will feel the same way, and they will probably try to convince the more reluctant ones that this is the only way now.

Would this start out with just Giovanni stealing only what they need at first? But over several trips where each time they successfully steal everything without getting caught, would Giovanni start taking more? Stuff they don’t need, but stuff he wants?

Is he going to then start taking more expensive stuff out of spite from Kamado, just to say “I can take what I want and you can’t stop me”?

The immediate decline is the much more humorous route haha, but I agree a slow decline into a very sharp dip is fantastic. Things are bad, yes, but they can manage! Right? It could be worse!

And then things take the worst twist imaginable, with Ingo sustaining a very bad wound, and it all falls apart, getting very bad very fast from there.

I’ve been on board with the idea. Kids do go out and steal from Jubilife. (Heck I drew a drawing of Jubilife straight up on fire haha) Ingo’s the one that disapproves of it (he obviously wouldn’t condone stealing, especially since it would be dangerous for the kids to do that in case they get caught? He’d probably ask the kids to see if Pearl clan can somehow extend any help instead) and I think younger kids would agree with this just because Ingo’s the one saying it. But there are kids that do not listen to Ingo, like Giovanni, and do it anyways. Pearl clan is too far, they won’t help because Kamado commanded them not to, and Jubilife is right there. Because they are desperate, and they know things aren’t sustainable unless they steal.

Sure throw them in too!

I think someone did mention earlier that with so many kids popping up, the banishment occur happen sooner, and I could see that happening. Kamado doesn’t know what’s going on but he doesn’t want his village housing this.

And not only does Pearl clan not have enough food for them all, Kamado ordered the other clans not to help, just like in the game.

Unlike the game, where they really do refuse to help you at first to uphold relations, I feel like Pearl clan would want to help? Instead of just one kid, this is a whole group of kids at stake now, and one of their wardens with them. They might try to sneak some help under the radar maybe? But they don’t have the resources to help in any big way that matters.

#papa ingo au #lord of the flies variant

[yawpie]

Shooting star

{NOT INOSAKU} {BESTFRIEND AU}

"Mango ice-cream is way better!"

"No! strawberry slaps as always!"

"Strawberry ice cream taste like my cough medicine!"

"Have you ever tried it Sakura? Besides, it matches your hair as well"

"No, but have yo—!"

Before Sakura could finish rambling about how bad strawberry ice cream tasted, she was stopped when a spoonful of strawberry ice cream was jammed into her mouth. Her eyes widened when she realised what Ino had done. Her eyes widened even more when she noticed how good it tasted that her forehead muscles hurt.

"Like it billboard brow?"

Sakura swallowed the ice cream and wiped her mouth before she spoke "It tasted better than I expected" certainly not like the cough medicine she talked about "But I'll stick with mine, thankyou"

"Whatever"

Sakura and Ino were inseparable since childhood and did everything together. They shared storied, secrets, and laughed together. They were each other's support system, confidantes, partner in crime and everyone around them knew how their friendship was unbreakable.

Ino was the extroverted one, always ready to take on any challenge and make new friends. She had a contagious smile and a bubbly personality that drew people towards her. Sakura, on the other hand, was an introvert, quiet and reserved. She was content with a few close friends and loved to read books and watch movies. Ino brought out the best in Sakura, and Sakura grounded Ino whenever she got too carried away.

They went to the same school and lived in the same neighbourhood. They spent their summers swimming in the lake, playing board games, and watching the stars. They had dreams of traveling the world together, becoming writers, and living in a cosy cottage by the lake.

From eating ice cream in elementary school, to random pizza dates in high school, to screaming their lungs out to their favourite music in their rooms, sleepless sleep overs and laughing till their stomach's hurt. Day by day, they only wished they would stay together as best friends till death do them apart.

"You're my best friend, you are supposed to feel the second-hand embarrassment"

Ino and Sakura were driving to college like the nineteen-year old's they were and Ino was singing her hear out with the window rolled down in the morning, and they had just been caught being ugly at seven in the morning.

"You'll be the death of me pig, plus it's seven am in the morning?!"

As they grew older, their friendship only grew stronger. They went to college together, took the same courses, and even joined the same sorority. They were each other's wing-woman, and they never let anything come between them. They had each other's back no matter what.

"Ino guess what?!"

"You finally found your man?" Ino said peaking from her laptop

"Yes! And I have a date with him tomorrow!" Sakura said jumping up and down squealing as Ino put her laptop down and went to do the same

"Dressing you up is my job! And was it that guy you were talking about? One of the Uchiha brothers?" Ino held Sakura's hand together looking into her eyes.

"Yes! The younger one!" Sakura said as Ino pulled her into a hug

"Sasuke Uchiha? You bagged that guy? Oh my we should already start preparing for your wedding. I'll be your bridesma—"

"Ino, it's just a date. Stop celebrating already, we dint find yours yet "Sakura cut her off.

"Tsk. Don't worry about me honey, I'll have a man when the right time comes up"

And so they moved in together after graduating university into a small apartment big enough for the two of them. Now getting a job was the main thing to pay off their rents and it looked like Sakura had one today.

"So how do I look?" Sakura said standing in front of Ino with her pencil skirt and white formals

"Banger my lady, show them who Sakura Haruno is!" Ino said balling her fists into the air.

"It's already getting late" rushed Sakura putting on her watch and grabbing her bag

"Ino, promise me something okay?" Sakura said picking up her train pass.

"Hm? Yeah yeah I'll buy you strawberry ice cream after your interview" she said not looking at her.

"Thankyou, but no, not that" Ino closed her laptop and turned towards her best friend raising her eyebrow and gesturing her to continue

"Promise me that you'll live your life to the fullest. Travel the world, write your stories, and fall in love. Don't waste a single moment. Promise me that you'll be happy." Sakura walked to Ino and gave her a warm hug

"That was sudden—ow! Alright I promise!" Ino said releasing the hug as she held her shoulders

"I promise, billboard brow"

-------

Ino was now pacing around their room, worrying and overthinking as every second passed by. Sakura was to return home two hours ago and she wasn't home yet. She grabbed the TV remote to divert her mind but it soon fell when she saw what was on the news

"Train caught fire on the way to it's destination in Tokyo this morning, 750 assumed dead and 30 unidentified"

Ino grabbed her purse and jolted off to the station Sakura was supposed have gone to, it seems that they had shifted all the passengers to the Konoha hospital, she quickly called a taxi and drove to the hospital, running her way to the ER

"Sakura Haruno, is there any patient here named Sakura Haruno?!" Ino tried to take a breath as she asked the receptionist.

"Please describe the patient" The nurse pulled out a notepad

"Pink hair, green eyes, was wearing a pencil skirt and a white formal" Ino said holding on to the straps of her bag tightly

The nurse looked up from her clipboard downhearted

No.... nononoonononono this can't be happening—

"Bed number 314, please take her to patient number 314" The receptionist said to one of the nurses.

"Please follow us ma'am"

And there she laid on the hospital bed, her white shirt now burnt and brown due to the fire, her arms and legs bruised with second degree burns as the nurse lifted up the white sheet from her face

"Is she the one you're looking for?"

It was as if the world had stopped, no way that was sakura right?! the person who i promised that i would buy her Ice cream after—

She let out one of the painfullest sobs the hospital had ever heard, clutching the white sheets on the bed and holding her best friend's hand as she kneeled down on the floor

"No.....not you Sakura" 

Sakura, her best friend had passes away, leaving Ino heartbroken and alone

-----

"Promise me that you'll live your life to the fullest. Travel the world, write your stories, and fall in love. Don't waste a single moment. Promise me that you'll be happy."

Ino kept her promise. She traveled the world, wrote her stories, and fell in love. But she could never forget Sakura, her best friend, her soulmate. She missed her every day and wished she could have her back.

Years went by, and Ino grew old. She never forgot Sakura, and she lived her life to the fullest, just like she promised. But her heart was always heavy with the pain of losing her best friend. She missed the laughter, the secrets, and the adventures they shared.

One day, as Ino sat in her rocking chair by the lake, watching the stars, she whispered to the wind, "I miss you, Sakura. You were my soul mate, my person, my wing-women, my best friend forever"

And as if in response, a shooting star streaked across the sky, lighting up the darkness for a moment, reminding Ino of the light that Sakura brought into her life. And then, it was gone, leaving Ino with her memories, her regrets, and her love for her best friend.

#sakura haruno #sakura #ino yamanaka #best friends #soulmates #slow burn #one shot #sad ending #naruto fanfiction

[tv-sinner]

4, 18, 26, 31 and 43!

4. A character you rarely talk about?

Hmmm.. I guess it would have to be some of my more brand new ocs (aka ones that aren’t even developed enough to have a tag on here yet!). A lot the ocs I had on my previous oc aesthetic blog are either in oc purgatory or in the process of getting revamped entirely. Some are so new that i have yet to draw them, much less talk about them. But for now, I’ll focus on one who I haven’t drawn yet from VITW verse: Adira, a butch dandelion rogue who has a love-hate/lovers AND enemies relationship with the strawberry monster huntress, St. Wickam.

Adira was disgraced knight who now wanders the wilderness as a thief and mercenary. She often finds herself crossing paths with the high-strung strawberry and she’s made it her personal mission to play with her and to steal her heart (literally or metaphorically? Whatever happens first). Wickam was initially charmed by her but she soon realized that Adira stole her money and they’ve been getting into homoerotic fights about it (and many other instances of them messing with each other) ever since. Their relationship is.. complicated. And neither are ready to admit to themselves or each other that they have romantic feelings for each other. And that’s all I have for now. 🫡

18. Any OC crackships?

Two words: Archdemon Polycule… Or more accurately, separate polycules that have overlap with some members but not all of them are involved with each other. Here’s a visual aid I drew for this weird ass poly ship:

All Roads Lead to Asmodeus. Would this polycule be an absolute disaster of a relationship? Yes. Do I think it would actually work out? No, I doubt it would last for very long, especially when infernal politics come into the mix… Not to mention that they tend to bicker with each other a lot. Would it at least be entertaining to watch this particular polycule crash and burn? Yes. This will never happen in canon but it would be funny if it did.

26. Have you ever had to change your OC’s design or something else about them against your will?

Not exactly? The only thing that kinda made me change things about my ocs against my Will was probably the existence of H*zbin H*tel/H*lluva B*ss. For a while, I stepped away from my Hell/Heaven story partly because of its popularity/fandom and me wanting to distance myself from it, which included my own story about Hell. I would elaborate further, but there’s a time and place for being a hater and it isn’t here lol. The other, more major reason was that I had a crisis of faith in my artistic and writing ability was also having at the same time I was vocally beefing with these series on tumblr.

31. Pick one OC of yours and explain what their tumblr blog would be like (what they reblog, layout, anything really)

I can think of a few ocs who would actually have a tumblr blog.. I think the most interesting of which would be Archdemon Belphegor’s tumblr blog(s). I’d imagine she’d have several blogs: her main (memes, occasionally posts about her inventive work, plushies, science posts), a blog dedicated to programming and maybe game dev, an aesthetic blog based on 90s computers and video games, and a separate NSFW blog not connected to her main. I’d imagine she’d take the time to make her own custom layout and across the board, they’d all have old computer desktop/old video game vibes. She posts pretty frequently and she sometimes slacks off on her work to check her socials, including tumblr.

43. Do you have any certain type when you create your OCs? Do you tend to favour some certain traits or looks? It’s time to confess

Oh definitely. For one, I typically give my ocs curly/wavy hair, usually dark hair (brown or black). I rarely give them blonde or ginger hair. And even my ocs who have gray hair now were brunettes in their youth. I tend to give my ocs non-straight hair because I find drawing hair with a lot of volume/defined shapes to be more fun than just straight hair.

Aside from that, I tend to make my ocs fat, mostly because I’m fat myself! And a vast majority of my ocs end up with long lashes since I tend to just. Give them obvious lashes, regardless of gender. What can I say? Lashes look great.

#filth posts #answered #adira #st. wickam #mammon #lucifer #leviathan #asmodeus #beelzebub #belphegor #abaddon

[muchalucha-art]

¡Mucha Lucha! - Through The Past Backwards - Episode 18

Whenever we got a generic storyline (that is, a story that could be used in any animated series, anywhere) imposed upon us, we always looked to include a lucha libre angle. Thrills & Skills we realized was approved because that was the one thing it lacked. So we set out just to have some fun with the designs. I drew a lot of Scotsmen, musicians and footballers for this one!

Brian Tribble is credited for the storyboard, but I have no idea how this came to be: he wasn't on the crew, I never met him, and as far as I know this was his only board. I guess it was just down to circumstances of the day.

Party Animal was another one-sentence outline. It was a very brief sentence too, and the whole storyline was plotted via the board. I remember it being a real process too, and being part of a few sessions to add some story beats. Dave Cunningham is credited with the board, but I remember jumping onto storyboards for this as well and doing the Rey Dinamico scenes, El Bobo and a few others. Rey Dinamico is erroneously referred to as 'Rey Misterioso' in the description above.

I've detailed this before, but we were pushing for Rey Mysterio Jr. himself as guest star for this one. Notable for the first appearance of everyone's favorite female students...

#mucha lucha episodes #mucha lucha! #mucha lucha #Episode 18 #party animal